1: Automaton

He feels her lips wet against his, his cheeks pressed against the bars, the rust peeling off. Her hands rub against his chest, feeling, groping, meandering around his girth. Her dark tresses caress his neck. Behind he hears the dripping of water in his cell, the wind howling through the cell bar. Then he feels a jolt. She’s being torn away by guards, sullen, pock-marked, silent. She struggles, they slap her, drag her away.
She Screams “I’ll see you again, one day when we’ll all be free” Her voice is dulcet, it seems to fill the air like the scent of roses. He watches her being pulled out, retreats back into the corner of the cell, huddled, like a kitten clinging to its mother’s womb. The dripping intensifies. It gets louder, till it no longer seems like dripping, but something from outside the realms of nature. The cell fills with coloured fumes. Gradually the cell too fills with colour, it clarifies, as if a rainbow entered the room and started exploring. Then it shakes, he shakes, he turns over on his side.
He Wakes.
He is the focus of attention. Faces surround him, smiling, repressing, it seems to him, laughter at his expense. There’s an awkward moment, then the ice is broken.
“So, you really like that parachute, Private Schillerz. Well, You should do, it may save your life one day. One Day in the near future”
He looked down at his parachute. It was indeed covered in saliva. He tried to think why this may be so. He rubbed the dust from his eyes. As he did, a voice came from the other side of the plane.
“No, I think he has a sweetheart back home, and he is thinking, perhaps, of her”
There is laughter.
Then her remembers.
“No, I was thinking of that movie they showed us at the base camp, just before we left.”
There’s a movement in the corner of the plane. A sallow sergeant looks up from the book he has been engrossed in. He’s Johann Janker, but behind his back, he’s nicknamed “Martin”, after Boorman, for his zealous devotion to the ideals
of the fuehrer.
“This is My Life for Ireland of which you speak?”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And what did you think of movie?”
“It was sad, the way they were separated at the end. Beautifully shot, though, and…”
The Sergeant suppressed a frown, and interjected in an irritable tone: “No, my friend, the meaning of the movie. What does it say to you about what we are doing here?”
He paused. “Nothing. I just enjoyed it”
This time the sergeant was unable to suppress his frown.
“This is intolerable. How will we succeed in our historic mission with only such idiots to fight for us?”
There is an uneasy silence, then another NCO speaks up.
“I, too saw this film, and I am interested to know what you think, sergeant”
“Good. This is a film about oppression of hard working peasants by Jewish plutocrats. The young man represents….
“Wait a minute” interrupts his interlocutor, Corporal Spiegel. “This film is set in Ireland, where there are no Jews. The oppressors are surely the English landlords.”
“Yes, of course, but you see London is controlled by the Jews. They run the banks, the government, the police. The landlords are merely their agents”
“You think London is run by the Jews? Why then, did the fuehrer insist that the English should help us to rid the world of their influence”
“England must, of course, help us. But first we have to liberate England. This is why we are here.”
This remark interests private Schillerz. “Why do we have to land in Ireland to free England?” he asks.
“They are our brothers. Read Gobineau, who originated the thesis of Aryan supremacy. They are people of the soil, like us. They work hard. They reject the greedy plutocracy of the Jews in London. They have always allied themselves with their enemies: Philip of Hapsburg Spain, The Jacobins, our own Kaiser Wilhelm. When we land…
He is again interrupted. “If they are, as you ascertain, our brothers, why does our manual warn us that they are dirty and pugnacious?” These words, coming from the thin, firm lips of the Corporal, have a smug, taunting ring. The Sergeant, now showing increasing signs of irritation, replies: “They are people of the soil. They may never have seen foreigners before. It is reasonable for them to be distrustful. But remember, the one foreigner they distrust the most is the Englishman. If we keep this in mind, we can accomplish our mission. Then we can have a world free from the pernicious, penny-pinching….
He stops talking when he realises that the troops have stopped paying attention to him. They are looking out the window at a sight some of them have never seen before: The Sea.
Private Schillerz has never seen the sea before. When his family were offered a Kraft durch Freude holiday he wanted to travel to the North Sea, play in the sand, taste the salt water. Instead he was dragged through the Alps, returning with a running nose and numb toes. As he gazed in wonder at the boundless vistas of azure, he speculated what it must be like to live on an island so remote as Ireland. This was what had attracted him to the mission, rather than any great interest in the country’s history or politics. He thought about the conversation the NCOs had had, and leaned towards the beliefs of the Sergeant, though the corporal’s questions continued to gnaw at him. If the sergeant was wrong, then what was all this for? Why had they joined the HitlerJugend, the party, the abwehr? Why were his friends dying, why would it be so long before he could se his family again? If the sergeant was wrong, then the whole world was absurd.


He had a basic idea what his mission would be. He and the others would be parachuted into different areas in Ireland where they would liase with members of a revolutionary anti-English group called the IRA. They would set up bases from which secret missions into England would be launched. The information they would acquire could help to bring England to its inevitable downfall. He was unsure, however, what the motives of this organisation were. As he understood it, part of their country was still occupied by the English and they were trying to liberate it. Yet he was given to understand that the majority of people did not support them. He reasoned that it was because the country was a decadent democracy and the people there were unwilling to fight.
He wondered what it was like to live in a democracy. How dull and colourless it must be, without the parades, the marches, the concerts, the organised holidays. How the people must run around like headless chickens without a fuehrer to guide them. How they must lack a sense of belonging, the things that the Hitlerjugend gave him and his friends. He thought of some of them, who had died on the snow on the Eastern front. It sorrowed him to think of the sacrifices necessary to liberate the world. He looked around at his comrades on the plane, some reading, some sleeping, some looking out the windows. How many of them would he see again after the war was over?
He looked out again at the sea. Its vastness reassured him, made him understand that he was a small player in the bigger scheme of things.
He thought of the fuehrer descending from the sky like Wotan in Triumph das Willens, the Meistersinger overture playing. He imagined himself being welcomed back like that.
He wondered what the people would be like. He thought it strange that people of certain characteristics fitted so comfortably into certain countries. Germans were strong, resolute, The English were effete, pampered, The Irish were pugnacious, temperamental. How did this state of affairs come about? It was not for him to wonder. It was his duty only to follow his orders.
He drifted back into a reverie. He looked at he faces of those around him. He sensed they shared his fear, his anticipation, his wonder. He listened to the whirring of the aircraft engine. He knew that before long he would be out of this confined space before long and in a world where he would have to improvise.
He looked around the plane again. One of the NCOs was fiddling with a radio, trying to get weather reports. He was chosen for that job because of his excellent English. Private Schillerz always had a problem with the language. He remembered seeing The Blue Angel, the opening scene, where the schoolchildren were trying to recite from Hamlet, and unable to pronounce the English word “the”. He related to this so much. He remembered these times, heady days of his early youth, the anarchy, the chaos, the riots in the streets, he remembered his father, an old Wehrmacht man who had fought for the Kaiser in the last war, say how the country needed a strong leader to bring things back to the way they were. He remembered the way his father used to talk about the old days when there were no cars or telephones and life was simple. He believed it would be this way again, after this war was over. There would be no supine surrender this time, no reparations to greedy Jewish American bankers. There would be a Reich that would last a thousand years. He wondered how many of these years he would be alive. He could die today, if his parachute failed to open, or live for another for another fifty years, maybe even longer. German scientists were making such headway, freed from the theories of aliens like Einstein that they might perfect an elixir before too long. He thought of the Blue Angel again, of Dietrich, blonde, statuesque, smoke escaping seductively from her lips. Were there women like that in Ireland? Were there women like that anywhere?
He turned to the NCO who was operating the radio, asked him how it was going.
“I managed to tune into an Irish radio station, but there is nothing about the war and no weather reports”
“This is strange” he replied. “Perhaps they are afraid that if they give weather reports then we will take advantage of them”
He laughed, and said, “I doubt they are so paranoid”
Private Schillerz reflected, and agreed. He asked when the first drops would be made.
“Within the next half an hour. But you will be one of the last, as you are landing in the west of the country. He pointed out his landing co-ordinates on the map, but it was the island as a whole that grabbed his attention. It seemed so rugged, like the face of an old man who had earned a certain tortured nobility through a life of hardship and toil. He thought of the map of Germany and how it had changed, it seemed to reach out towards the Ukraine before the last war, only to have its hand cut off by the traitors and Jews at Versailles. Now it reached all over Europe, like an octopus spreading its tentacles. So amorphous it was, the map of Ireland seemed like a rock of stability in comparison.
He looked over at the commandos who would shortly be dropped. They fiddled constantly with their ‘chutes, checked repeatedly to see everything was in order. There was a constant motion, as if they feared a lapse into a vortex of fear and anguish if they stopped. He wondered how bad this feeling must be for those on the allied side, who lacked the same sense of historical mission and were only fighting the inevitable. For them, the feeling must be intolerable.
The moment was becoming closer now. Hands were being shaken, messages of support received, heils offered. The southern coast of Ireland was coming into view. It was just as rugged as the map that represented it, the cragged hills seeming to tell tales of woe. Where the sea and the land met both sides seemed locked in perpetual conflict. Above, on the cliffs, a serenity, a stoicism. He noticed how few houses there were. Perhaps this was what home was like before the curse of modernity hit it.
Now the door of the plane was being opened. He felt the wind rush in, felt it blow on his face, watched the others hold onto their caps and goggles. Such a rush of raw energy filled the plane. This is what the blitzkrieg must have felt like. He watched as commandos struggled to keep maps held in the breeze as they tried to establish their coordinates. He watched the final farewells as the first commando shouted Heil Hitler and leapt. He joined the others to watch him descend. He marvelled at how his body diminished so rapidly, how the ‘chute seemed to materialise from nowhere, and then gradually shrink into nothingness. He thought of how life was like this, how we emerge from the womb, grow to manhood, and then slowly decay. Only an aberration like war of famine could interfere in this process. When this war was over, the world would be forever stable. How lucky he was to be alive at such a momentous hour.
Another reverie, Another Rude Awakening. The sergeant-major taps him on the shoulder,
“It’s not for you to dream, but for you, and for all of us to help bring the dreams of greater men to fruition. Your time to land is coming shortly. Do you need to be reminded of your objectives?”
He is taken a little by surprise.” No, sergeant.” He hesitates, gives the salute.
The sergeant suppresses a frown, returns the salute. “Very well. You are due to land in five minutes, if our coordinates are accurate.
So, the moment had finally come. He would drop through the air and land on an island about which he knew only what his superior officers had told him. His grasp of the language was tenuous and his knowledge of the people was limited. But he had a historic mission to fulfil, and this certainty would allow him to survive.
He shook hands with his fellow troops, checked one final time to se that everything was in order. He looked at the view below. He remembered what it was like when he had seen aeroplanes from the ground and wondered what the view was like from above. He thought of the parachute stories he had heard at base, and then rapidly, suddenly unwilling to confront his fear, of other things, of the women he might meet and what he might accomplish in Ireland. He heard a shout from the cockpit. It was his time.
He held onto the sides of the hatch , clinging like a kitten discovering a new and unfamiliar world. He felt the wind blow into his face, wondered what it would be like to have long, flowing hair that the elements could toss around. He looked at the landscape below, misty now, diced with fields of different, often unfamiliar hues. He wondered what grew in each of these fields.
Another shout interrupted his cogitations. He hand was shaken, he was offered a salute, it was returned. His superior officer shouted Heil Hitler, barely audible above the din of the plane. He breathed deeply, and jumped.
He felt a sudden rush, watched the ground fly up towards him, felt the gusts shake his uniform. He pulled the cord, was jerked back up towards the heavens, then allowed float gently to the ground. He watched the land around him, felt the soft, cold mist in his cheeks. As he drifted towards the ground, he felt this was like an ascent into heaven in reverse. He might have left his body on the plane and left his soul descend into this land of zephyrs and mists. He closed his eyes, breathed the air. He let himself descend slowly, returning to the bosom of mother earth.
As he approached the ground, he noticed he was drifting into a field of bright green. It was unlikely to be grass, he thought, perhaps a vegetable of some kind. As he grew closer, he noticed that they were tall plants, with rough, green leaves, and little white flowers. It was among these strange crops that he would land.
He did so with a thud that left him lying on the ground with one of his boots mired in the coarse stony soil where these plants thrived. He had dislodged some, it seemed, torn it from its roots, and found hard, heavy seeds hanging from them.
Potatoes.
He had seen so many of these in recent years and wondered where they came from, how they grew. Though he came from the countryside himself, it was not an area where these vegetables were grown. He remembered his mother regretting how dependent they had become on these plants. Superstitious thing, she thought that they were evil because they grew under the soil. He tried in vain to assure her that the soil was noble, that the Reich needed to become self-sufficient and that this crop would help it in this endeavour. How old-fashioned she was sometimes, how out of tune with the needs of the new man.
He looked around, tried to establish his coordinates. It wasn’t easy. It was so overcast he couldn’t see the sun. There were few distinguishing landmarks. He took out his compass. It was little help, as he was unaware which direction he was relative to his rendez-vous. He figured he would get to the nearest road and then find his way into town. First of course, he would have to hide his chute. He had forgotten what his instructions were. Should he bury it, or just leave it there, among the potato plants. If he left it there it might be reported to the police, or whatever they were called. But it would take time and energy to bury it, and he had no tools to do so. This was a dilemma. Suddenly he felt alone. He decided it would be better to bury it. He started to dig with his hands. The soil was hard and full of stones. It got beneath his fingernails and some of the sharp pebbles cut his hands. He wondered how anything could grow in such an environment.
He felt sweat start to develop on his brow, then felt a chill as the wind blew on it. Already, he was beginning to feel that this was a strange, paradoxical place, hot and cold, lush and barren, flat and mountainous all at once. He would not be surprised if the people were as pugnacious as the manual had said they were. He continued to dig. He reflected on another irony, how he had never expected to be digging in a field of potatoes as part of his service to the Reich. After the war, there would be no need for Teutons to do such ignominious work, with the Reich expanding to include so many Poles and Ukrainians. Then he thought, maybe it was better not to think too much of the fatherland. He would have to adjust to life here, in this alien land. He dug some more. The soil became even poorer as he dug deeper, more impenetrable. He would have to dig a wider hole and spread it around. But then it would look more conspicuous. Then he fantasised about what would happen to the chute when the war was over. Would it become a symbol of the nation’s liberation? Would there be a statue erected at this spot? He thought it unlikely. He decides to dig a long hole parallel with on of the drills of potatoes where he would bury the chute. He wondered how and when the potatoes would be harvested. Was there big machinery, like at home, or was the land still tilled by the toil of honest hard-working peasants like his ancestors? Yes, maybe he was here in this potato field for a reason, linking him with the blood and soil of his forefathers. He began to dig with more gusto, impervious to the increasing levels of perspiration he was emitting. He hadn’t felt a surge of energy for a long time, not since he saw the fuehrer for the first time. Then he remembered his vow to himself to stop thinking of his homeland.
He finally buried the chute, then noticed how dirty his hands and clothes were. He felt he must look repellent, like a Slav labourer rather than a son of the Reich. But maybe he would be less likely to incur suspicion this way. He started to make his way out of the field, cocking his ear to listen for the sounds of distant traffic. Yet all he could hear was the soil absorbing the mist and the twittering of birds. Was he all alone in the world? Could he survive like this, like one the characters in Fraulien Refenstahls early mountain films? He thought it unlikely, much as the idea of living directly off the land appealed to him. He reasoned that if he kept on walking, he would eventually get to the road, he would ask for directions to where his contact lived. He tried to remember the name, one he had tried to pronounce so often but without any success. He fumbled around in the pockets of his suit. There it was: O Reidigi. How the hell did one pronounce such a name? It sounded like the noises Eastern Europeans must have made while getting drunk and listening to jazz. Then he remembered what Nietzsche said about those who must defeat monsters must also embrace them. After all, had not the fuehrer entered into the pact with the Bolshevik monster Stalin just a year before? Before he could enter into the clammy embrace of those whose names he could not pronounce, he would first have to find them. He walked through one of the drills, the leaves of the potato plants brushing against his legs, the mud filling the soles of his shoes, the sweat dripping from his brow. Then, suddenly, he heard the sound of a car in the distance. He looked, squinted into the distance, and through the mist saw the outline of an automobile moving slowly along the horizon. He would have started running if it wasn’t for the pains in his limbs. He knew he wouldn’t have to sleep outside tonight. This filled him with relief, then an ironic melancholy. Wouldn’t it have made a great story to tell everyone when he got home, how he survived a night in the bogs of Ireland by himself? Then he reflected, it hardly mattered. He would have other tales to tell, other stories of wild adventures and war-winning accomplishments. Even he didn’t he could make them up, after all, he was from the land of Goethe and Schiller and Heine and all those other lofty names from the past that he kept hearing of.
The road came closer now, but he perceived no more traffic. Maybe he would have to walk into town. He didn’t even know which town was which, and was warned not to place too much trust in Irish signposts. Finally he reached the road, shook the excess mud from his boots, and waited for a car to come along. He practiced his Irish accents, thought again of the Blue Angel. He sat by the side of the road, thought he heard a car coming, but then looked up and saw the noise was coming from above. It seemed the big, dark nimbus clouds above his head had considered this an apposite moment to nourish the earth below. He pulled his jacket over his head, thought that this was a sacrifice that he would have to make, and could withstand. After all, he was a strong, resolute, hardy son of the Reich, not a penny-pinching Jew or an effete Englishman or a weak, idiotic Slav or…. He looked up saw that the rain had stopped, it was just a shower. The sun was breaking through the clouds. He had heard that the weather here could be capricious, but he had not expected this. He sat down again, wondered how long it would take before some transport came along. Then he heard a noise coming in the distance, as sort of rumbling cacophony increasing in volume at the slowest imaginable rate. Was it death, walking along the road, dragging his sickle behind him, his bones shaking? Nothing would surprise him in this country. To his relief, he saw an unwieldy cart being carried by a sickly horse driven by an aged man in rags. His life would go on, but he was increasingly unsure what sort of life it would be.
The driver pulled the reins of the horse and the cart came to a sudden stop. The horse neighed, the cart shook. The driver placed his hand on his chin, and stared at Private Schillerz, who could think of nothing to say. The driver took off his cap, scratched his receding, unkempt hair, and said: “Bejasus, you’re a quare lookin’ one”
He had no idea what this meant. This did not sound like the English he learnt in school. He knew he would have problems with the language, but he didn’t imagine they would be of this magnitude. He would have to reply, though, otherwise he would look like an idiot.
“I beg your pardon?” “`I beg your pardon’ says he”, replied the driver, mocking his accent, placing particular emphasis on the second word. “You’re not from these parts, are ye?”
Private Schillerz was relieved. He understood this, or at least he thought he did. “No”, he replied, trying to replicate an Irish accent as best he could “I am from Dublin”
“Oh, a city boy, is it y’are? And what might ya be doin’ down in these parts?”
What might he be doing? He was unfamiliar with this linguistic formation, but thought it would be best not to dwell on it. “I’m visiting a friend of mine down here. I got a lift to the last town and someone told me I could walk to…”
A brief moment of panic almost overcame him as he tried to recollect the name of the town where he was to make his rendez-vous. “…Ballanasareshe”
“Ah, bejasus, you city fellas don’t even know yer own language. Sure ‘tis Bailenasaoirse yer looking for, but someone’s been pulling yer leg, ‘cause ‘tis another five miles down the road and sure ye must’ve known there’d be rain comin’. You’d better come with me, why dontcha, ‘cause I’m headin’ that way meself”
He didn’t quite understand all of this but it seemed by the way the driver was pointing at the cart that he was being offered a lift. He got on the rickety cart, thanked the driver, who asked, “and who might you be looking for down here?” inducing another moment of panic. “I’m looking for a…” he gulped, breathed deeply, “Pronchas O Reidigh”
The driver looked back at him, his face suddenly changed from naïve benevolence to a detached suspicion. “Oh, bejasus, there’s some quare stuff going on in his place, if tis Prionsios O’ Reidigh yer talkin’ about. People comin’ and goin’ at all hours. People are wondrin’ what sort of divilment is goin’ on there at all at all. I don’t suppose you’d happen to know, would ye?
He feigned innocence, alarmed at the inability of his new cohorts to keep their activities a secret from the population at large. “No he just a friend, we meet one day in a bar in Dublin, we have a few pints, he says come down my place in the country whenever you please.”
“Bejasus, but yev an awful funny way of tallkin’. I don’t suppose yer one of those German spies that’s supposed to be infiltratin’ the country?”
He was shocked. How could he know? Was it so obvious? Then he looked around, saw the smile on his face, realised it was just a joke. The Irish sense of humour, of which he had been forewarned. He made a reasonable imitation of a laugh, and replied, “No, no, you don’t have to worry about anything like that”
“Well, ‘tis just as well, ‘cause I’ve been hearin’ awful things about what’s goin’ on over there”
Schillerz’ curiosity was now aroused. “Oh yes, what sort of awful things would these be?”
“Oh , some of the stuff I can’t even be repeatin’, ‘tis so awful. But sure we don’t know if tis true or not since the government don’t let us know what’s going on over there in Germany.”
He was now fascinated. Did they have censorship here, like they did in Bolshevik Russsia? He would have thought that there would be a constant barrage of propaganda against his people, as there was in the other democracies. This country was beginning to surprise him more and more. However, he would try to find out what this person’s impression of his homeland was like.
“No please, I am sure I am able to deal with whatever it is you have heard. I am old enough to remember the war against the British and the civil war, you know.”
Schillerz was impressed by his own recollection of Irish history but this drew only suspicion from his interlocutor, who paused a while and said: “Are ye really now, sure ye hardly look a day over twenty.”
Schillerz was a bit disconcerted by this. “No, I am twenty-four. I was very young when all these things happened, but I will always remember them. But please, tell me what you have heard about Germany”, adding, impulsively, afraid to incur suspicion, “up in Dublin it is very hard to find out anything about the war, the newspapers are all censored, people are afraid to talk, you know how it is, yes?”
This succeeded only in reinforcing his suspicions, it seemed. At this moment, it seemed that all his training had left him totally ill-equipped for the realities of this strange land.
“Ah jaysus, go way outta that. Don’t be tellin me you don’t know about the war up in Dublin. I’m sure you know just as much about the book burnin’s and the persecution of the Jews as I do.”
So now he knew the truth. Perhaps indeed there was censorship but allied propaganda was able to penetrate it. Now he knew what he was up against. Nevertheless, he could not let this remark go undefended.
“Perhaps you should not believe everything you hear from the British. After all, it is not so long since they were persecuting us.”
“Tis true, but I don’t be hearin’ this from the British. ‘Tis from tradespeople I know that used to go to Germany before all this Third Reich business started. ‘Tis a shame, they say, the country was such a nice place to visit before all this started.
Schillerz could feel his face turning red with rage as heard this, but did not want to say anything that might give him away.
“Perhaps it is still a nice place, or at least it will be after the war is over. If they are less friendly to traders because they want to become self-sufficient.”
This was a horrible miscalculation, it seemed. It elicited a narrow-eyed, leery gaze, but no verbal response. In the uneasy silence that followed, he tried to absorb the sights and sounds and smells of this new environment, but found that his fear preoccupied him. He needed to engage in conversation again before he would feel secure again. Secure, he thought. What a relative term that had suddenly become.
“So, how far are we from the village are we now?”
“About a mile, over that hill”, was the curt reply. It did nothing to ease his fears. Had his love for the Reich and everything it stood for got the better of his diplomatic skills? Had he jeopardised his whole mission with on misplaced piece of patriotism. He thought for a wile and reasoned that this person would probably report him to the authorities, and even if he did, his comrades in the IRA would have a contingency plan. And what if he did fail? Would not the Reich succeed anyway? Was he not a small cog in a huge machine?
He saw the village coming into view now. It was not like the villages in Bavaria, with their pretty red roofs and wooden shutters. He saw only a deathly dull mixture of grey, black and brown. As he grew closer, he did not hear the sounds he had previously associated with village life. It was as if he was entering a ghost town. He bit his tongue, in a forlorn gesture of self-restraint. He thought of the people in the wehrmacht, dying in the snow on the eastern front. Perhaps they would like to be in his shoes. As he entered the town, he saw not the vivacious peasant children he had expected, but emaciated, forlorn little creatures who seemed to lack either the guile or the energy to play, all dressed in dull, dark grey clothes. He saw older people too, aimlessly leaning against walls, smoking cigarettes, and wearing peaked caps. Was this the country of My life for Ireland? Where were the dances, the parties, the wakes? Where was the jollility, the rambunctiousness? In this town, the only thing that stood out from the endless greyness was the church. It seemed out of place.
As he passed, he caught sight of young children, perhaps seven or eight years of age exiting the church. They were dressed in uniforms, the girls wearing white lace, the boys black suits, like little miniature wedding costumes. He itched to learn what the meaning of this ritual was, but suspected it was something an Irish person, even one from the city would surely know, so he decided to keep his mouth shut. Everything would hopefully be explained in due course. Anyway, he doubted he would get any sort of response from the horse-and-cart driver, who remained taciturn and seemed likely to keep his distance. He would have to communicate with him again, if only to find out where his contacts lived, or even to make sure he was not being led to the police station.
“Are we far from the Reddigs’ house?” he asked, tentatively.
“Just round the corner.” Four, short lethargic word that provided him with immeasurable relief. He would not be led to the authorities, but to his contacts. Was it a historical inevitability, or was it just luck? He knew that the Reich was bound to triumph, but realised that many would have to die to bring about this success. It was not worth thinking about these things right now. This was a moment to enjoy his completion of the first obstacle thrown in the path of his mission.
The horse and cart turned the corner, swinging wildly. He caught on to the sides, making sure his luggage was okay. The driver said nothing, Schillerz decided it would be inappropriate to say anything. They carried on, past the grey houses and black-garbed natives, til they came to a particularly run-down, ramshackle building. Paint peeled off the walls, a few shrubs withered forlornly in the garden, where weeds fought for space with the long, uncut grass. This was how he imagined the houses in Eastern Europe looked, populated by lazy, ill-disciplined Slavs. He wondered who could live in such a place.
“This is the place you’re lookin’ for.”
The driver’s words took a second or two to sink in. Schillerz looked at him perplexedly, then realised the import of his words. It seemed that this is where his base of operations would be. He thanked the driver, failed to notice the disdain on his face. He took his bag, approached the house, then started to feel dizzy. He sat down, breathed deeply, and felt a sense of shame. It was not for sons of the Reich to react like this to adversity. Did the fuehrer head ever spin during his time in jail? Surely not. Then he rationalised. The events of the past few hours would surely disorientate anybody. This comforted him, and he thought once more of the soldiers on the eastern front. This was beginning to become a habit. He felt a bit better now, but then looked up and saw that some short, emaciated old women looking over at him and whispering, it seemed, into each other’s ears. He thought he had better go inside and meet his contacts before he drew any more attention to himself.
He approached the door with trepidation. Again, the varnish was peeling off, cracks ran along the doorstep. A mat, laden with rainwater, offered him it’s languid greeting. A knocker , rusty and immobile hung from the door. He turned around, noticed that the two old women were still talking and looking over at him sporadically. He thought it would be best to knock. He placed his hand tentatively on the knocker, recoiled in pain as a sharp piece of rust cut his finger. He tried to be calm, put his hand into his pocket and took out his handkerchief, held it at the point where he was bleeding, and knocked on the door with the other hand. He waited a few seconds, then heard the echoing of footsteps through the corridor. The door creaked open, and a giant greeted him.
“What can I do for yeh?” he asked
Schillerz did not know what to say. He had never seen such a big man before. He seemed, merely by looking down on him, to be questioning his motives for being there, even for existing. He wore a white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, revealing a broad chest with thick, wiry hair. His face was unshaven, Schillerz’ first thought was to wonder if anyone in the abwehr would have had the courage to ask him to shave.
Schillerz’ hesitated.
“I was given to understand…” he gulped “that a Pronshass O Reddig lived here”
“That’s me” was his reply. “And what might you be wantin’?”
“I be wantin’, I mean I want… I’ve been sent here”
A glint of recognition emerged on the face of the large man. This allowed Schillerz to relax a little.
“I’m… here…”
“You’re here, talkin’ outside my door in a thick German accent. Now that means one of two things. Either the G2 or the Garda Siochana have thought up some uncharacteristically crafty plan to seek me out, or you’re the German agent that I’ve been expecting for months. Now, which is it?”
Schillerz felt a mixture of relief and fear.
“I am from the abwehr, indeed, sir.”
The gargantuan one looked blank for a second, striking fear into Schillerz’ heart, then embraced him, causing him to fear momentarily that his ribs would be broken. He survived, shaken, now confident that everything strange, bizarre and frightening that could happen had already happened.
He was led through the corridor to the basement downstairs. On the way down the heavy-set one said: “The name’s Prionsios by the way, but if that’s too much of a mouthful for yeh, yeh can call me Frank.” “Yes. Frank.” He stuttered. “Frank. Frank is good.”
Frank looked at him quizzically, then asked: “So what took you so long to get here?”
“Well you must understand…”
He was now in the basement. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and walls. A solitary lightbulb was the only illumination. Around a table, some other men, varied in age and appearance, sat playing cards.”
“Gentlemen, said Frank, this is… Oh, Lord Jesus, I never got your name.” He put his hand, somewhat apologetically, on Schillerz’ shoulder.
“I am sergeant Schillerz, abwehr div... „
„’Tis Sergeant Schillerz, the German agent we’ve been waiting for. Hermann, this is Paddy, Micky, Davie, and Tom.”
He shook hands with them all. Before he could regain his composure, Frank said: “Hermann was just telling me why he took so long”
“Oh, well,” he said, caught off guard once more, “ the Reich’s work is spread very thinly right now. There is the East, North Africa, fears too that the U.S might enter the war, we cannot devote all our attention… “ he paused, choosing his words carefully, “to liberating small nations like Ireland.”
He looked around the table, and was relieved to se looks of approval on most face. One, however, stood out from the crowd. He rubbed his stubble pensively. His obvious lack of assent stopped Schillerz’ spiel in it’s tracks, and drew the crowd’s attention to himself.
“So, ‘tis a war of liberation yer fighitn’ is it? I’m sure the folks in Poland and Francce would be fascinated to hear this.”
Frank’s head dropped. He remembered all the struggles he had to make to maintain unity in his organisation, and all the splits that had happened in the last quarter of a century. He had put his own reservations about the Nazis aside in the hope that they could help to bring about a United Ireland. However, Davie, an iconoclast who seemed ill at ease in any form of movement, seemed unable to do so. Frank awaited Schillerz response with trepidation.
“Yes we are indeed on a war of liberation. We are liberating the world from the power of Jewish plutocrats. You have fought their power for hundred of years, and…”
He would have added that this made the two countries natural allies, but he was interrupted by Davie’s harsh, throaty laugh.
“Jewish plutocrats? Would yeh listen to him. Don’t yeh know ‘tis the Protestant landlords and the big farmers we’re fightin’? Sure we never left any Jews into this country”
Schillerz’ frowned. “Yes, but you see they are all agents of international Jewry. In London the stock exchange and the banks are all controlled by Jews. With these powers, they can control agriculture, industry; they make slaves of us all.
“Well, ‘tis a pity your fuehrer didn’t know this when he was writing his book, in which he says England and Germany are natural allies.”
This was too much for Schillrez to tolerate. The audacity of this man, sitting in a basement near an Irish bog, smugly insulting the fuehrer, inspired a paroxysm of rage in Schillerz belly. He lunged across the table towards Davie, arms flailing, unsure of whether to strangle him or just hit him. He was restrained by Frank and Micky who pulled him back by the shoulders as Davie looked smugly on.
“How dare you insult the fuehrer, he rasped, saliva dripping from his lips. He is the greatest man ever to live. He…”
Frank forlornly tried to intervene.
“Schillerz, please… calm down. What’s your first name?” He continued to struggle, but was no match for Frank physically. As Frank grabbed his wrists and held him behind his back, he swung his head violently in either direction, forcing Frank to put him into an ignominious headlock. He had not expected to suffer indignities like these.
Frank asked, “Alright, relax, just tell me, what’s your first fist name.” He sensed that Schillerz was beginning to relax a little, eased his grip on him a little.”
Schillerz’ breathed deeply a few times, trying to regain his composure. Eventually he uttered the word “Hermann”
“Alright Hermann, lets go upstairs and have a talk, the two of us.”
He breathed deeply again. He decided it would be best to acquiesce. He followed him back up the stairs, casting a backward glance at Davie, on whose face the smug expression had not changed, but whom he chose to ignore. He noticed too, that they chose to remain silent until he was out of earshot, when he heard their mumblings echoing through the cobwebbed corridors. He wondered what they were saying, how they perceived him. It was unlikely, he imagined that the word ubermensch would be used. Had he shamed the Reich? No, he reasoned, it was just a minor aberration.
Frank led him into a room upstairs. He checked to see that all the curtains were shut. He peeked through, as if checking there was nobody around. Then he turned on the light. He sat down, invited Schillerz to do likewise, and stared at him for a few seconds. It was an enigmatic stare; Schillerz couldn’t figure out quite what it’s import was. Eventually it was broken with the words, “What made you come to Ireland, Hermann?”
He didn’t really know how to answer this. If he said it was because of a movie he’d watched, it might seem embarrassing. He was wary also, of making any overtly patriotic statement, in view of the trouble this had earlier got him into. He decided on an answer that was a composite of half-truths and tenuous historical understanding.
“I was always aware that Ireland was a beautiful country and that the war might be my only opportunity to visit it. I knew there has always been a conflict between Britain and Ireland and I believe that by helping you, we can help to conquer Britain.”
Frank scratched his stubble again. He dropped the casual tone that he had been using, and suddenly became formal. “Let me make a few things clear. Our wartime alliance is a marriage of convenience. We don’t have any great reverence for your fuehrer, any more than we did for Philip II or the Directory. Furthermore we (in a later age he would have made inverted comma symbols with his fore fingers, but this was 1941 so he just placed added emphasis on this word) are extremely small in number. Many of us died in the civil war, others went along with the new administration, hoping our brethren in the six counties would eventually be welcomed back by constitutional means. And even the remainder are split. Some of us are socialists, some hardline Catholics. Oh, and I should also point out, we’re not very well armed.”
Schillerz’ reaction this time was not one of anger, but of shock and disillusion. He had expected to meet a well-disciplined, well-motivated body of men with whom he could ally himself, but instead he was confronted with this rattle-bag of unshaven misfits. Worse, the criticism of the fuehrer earlier had seemed like mere provocation, now it was revealed as the prevalent view of the organisation that would provide his support network. To have leapt to the defence of his idol would have seemed desperate and futile, so he went for a more reasoned approach.
“Why are you so eager to distance yourself from the motives of the Reich? Do you not realise how much things have gotten better in Germany since the National Socialist party has taken over? Full employment, no more inflation, holidays for everyone? Don’t you want also to live in a country like this?” “All we’ve ever wanted was for all of our people to be free from Britain. Some of us don’t concern ourselves with what’s going on in Germany, some of us, as you can see, disapprove of it. But all us are willing to accept your help.
To Schillerz, who could not quite get his her around the concept of “disapproving” of National Socialism, these words were hard to comprehend. He had to seek some form of clarification.
“How can you ally yourselves with people whose views you do not agree with? What sort of men are you?”
“Have you ever read Machiavelli or…” Frank was about to ask if his books had been burned in Germany but thought this would not be tactful. The name rang a bell for Schillerz but he had to admit he hadn’t. Tired of verbal discourse in a foreign tongue, he elected to shake his head.
“Machiavelli was a philosopher who lived at a time when the city-states in Italy were constantly entering into new alliances, each time thinking up new, more sanctimonious reasons for doing so. This led him to believe that power, not idealism or morality was their reason for doing so. If you’ll permit me to say so, I think he’d have some interesting things to say about the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. And about the fact that you’re sitting down talking to me now”, he added, amused at an irony he had only just realised.
To Schillerz this was apostasy, but he realised that there was no point in getting angry. Frank realised he may have antagonised him, and decided to moderate his views.
“Let’s just agree that we both want to fight the English, for whatever reason. Tell me, how much interest do the German high command have in Ireland?”
Schillerz sighed a sigh of relief as the conversation shifted away from politics and philosophy to military matters.
“Ah, well, as I said earlier, we are fighting a war on several fronts, and there is much to consider. But we realise that Churchill was very angry that Ireland chose to remain neutral, and we knew there must be a reason for this. Britain was a tougher nut to crack than we anticipated, and we realise we must explore more avenues in our attempt to defeat her.”
Frank, too, was more comfortable on this ground. They talked for a while of u-boats and arms consignments, of the robbery of arms from the munitions store in the Phoenix Park and Frank’s part in it, of Schillerz’ abwehr training, of his life growing up in the Reich. It seemed that, for all their differences they had much to communicate to each other. They were talking about Frank’s adventures in the war of independence when he suddenly interjected: “Oh, Christ, I forgot about the lads down below. Just a minute.”
Frank was going downstairs, Schillerz imagined, try to convince the more sceptical members of the group that he was indeed a useful ally. His suspicion was confirmed a few minutes later when he came back up call out: “Hermann, come on down.”
He walked down through the dark, damp dusty corridors. Damp and dusty at once? Only in Ireland, he thought. He listened to the mumbling that seemed to anticipate his entry and diminished as he drew closer. As he entered the room, Davie rose to greet him, and the others looked on with ostensible apprehension. Davie seemed less quick on his tongue than he had earlier been. It appeared as if his had been the victim of a tongue-lashing from Frank. He opened his mouth a few times without speaking, then finally managed to get a sentence together.
“Look, ah, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. We, y’know, don’t get too many foreigners ‘round here and I’m not really used to dealing with them. I didn’t really mean any offence”
He tentatively offered a hand of in a gesture of reconciliation. Schillerz thought that, as apologies went, it was pretty feeble but in the circumstances it would be better if he accepted it. He shook his hand awkwardly. It seemed neither of them knew what the other nationalities protocol was on handshaking. He wondered how many similar situations there were around the world at the same instance. The repercussions of this cultural mismatch failed even to make any ripples in the immediate surroundings, as sighs of relief were audible among all the participants in this meeting.
Frank slapped Schillerz on the back, a gesture that would have been intrusive at home but here might have been considered friendly. Frank said, “thanks for being so understanding. Now, d’you want something to eat? Ye must be starvin’”
The reversion to a more informal mode of discourse did not go unnoticed on Schillerz’ part. Was this the way he always spoke, or was he just trying to create an atmosphere of camaraderie? He would have enough time to deduce the answer to this question. More importantly in the immediate future, his answer to Frank’s question was emphatically in the affirmative.
Frank went upstairs tentatively, repeated his precautionary routine. He leaned over the top of the basement stairs, shouted out, “It’s Okay, the coast is clear.” Was this what it was like for the National socialist leadership in the early days? He thought of the belief it must take to get through such tribulations. Perhaps the people in whose company he was now were motivated by similar beliefs, and this was what caused the confrontation earlier. Perhaps when he got to know Davie better he would try to explain this.
Upstairs his hosts were going about preparation of dinner. He saw Davie bending down to pull something out of a big brown bag, the sort that horses ate out of at home. It turned out, he shouldn’t have been surprised to learn, to be full of potatoes, all of different shapes and sizes, some round, some elliptical, some weirdly anthropomorphic. He asked Frank if there was anything he could do to help, he replied with a string of “No’s” and an imprecation to sit down comfortably. “You’re in luck,” he added, “I’ve managed to get my hands on a fine piece of lamb steak.” As Schillerz watched them frantically peel the potatoes, cure the meat and prepare the stock, he marvelled at their ability to cook, but wondered why there were no women to do this job for them. He thought of the story of Baron Munchausen, and Fritz Lang’s Woman on the Moon, where women were able to do the housework all night, leaving men to get on with the more serious things in life. He had heard something about a movie been made of the Munchausen story as well, maybe he would get to see it when he got home.
He watched them place all the ingredients into a big saucepan, the sort that perhaps would be used to make goulash at home. As Frank stirred the pot, it seemed like he had entered a new persona again, that of domesticity. This rag-bag army seemed to lack the sort of chain of command he was familiar with, but strangely, rather than disorientating him, it was sort of endearing. He thought their resourcefulness was admirable. After all, the Reich too was forced to be resourceful in many way, with so many of it’s chains of supply cut off. The room was by now beginning to fill with steam, steam that bore a harsh, salient smell that caused his nostrils to contract reflexively and made his eyes water. The thought that they were trying to poison him flashed briefly across his mind but dispersed like the steam that drifted out the draughty doorways.
“Dinner’s served”, shouted Frank, as the others took their places dutifully. “I don’t suppose Hermann’s had a taste of Irish stew before now, have yeh, Hermann?”
He relied hesitantly, like a shy schoolboy approached by a girl he was attracted to. The question had surprised him a bit, and he was less at ease at the dinner table than he was alone with Frank. “No”, he offered, before he was interrupted by Paddy who interjected with : “Aye, I’d say ‘tis a bit different from your wieners and your schnitzels yeh have back home.” The others assented as a plate was placed on his place. It looked different from anything he had ever eaten, a watery and amorphous mix of potatoes, meat, and vegetables, some of which he could identify, some not. The others looked round eagerly as he placed a piece of meat in his mouth. It was stringy and he found it hard to chew, with little pieces getting stuck between his molars. He took a sip from a glass of water to help him chew, then looked up, nodded, affected a smile, and said “It’s good” Frank again patted him on the back, almost causing him to spit the meat out of his mouth, and said “Dowtcha boy”. Schillerz didn’t know what this meant but didn’t want to go to the trouble of asking, particularly as his food was so difficult to chew. The others were smiling, though, so he assumed it was some sort of compliment. As he struggled to penetrate this strange dish, he looked around anxiously to check if the others were doing the same. No, it seemed they were wolfing the food down as if they had not eaten in days. He felt ill at ease again, but assured himself he would get used to this food. After all, he was acclimatising to the new surroundings, the weather, the language and all the strange modulations with which it was spoken here. As everyone else was finishing, he was only half finished, chewing this impenetrable, stringy meat. He decided he had better concentrate on the vegetables; if he left some of the meat on his plate maybe it might be attributed to travel sickness. The potatoes too, however, were soggy and tasted of meat. It seemed that the dead flesh pervaded the taste of everything in this meal. Then he thought of all the peat he had passed on the way here, and how that was decaying matter as well. Then he thought of the young children he had seen coming out of the church, and was eager to ask about them. He struggled to shift the food around inside his mouth so it wouldn’t sound like he was talking with his mouth full, then turned to frank and uttered his name.
“Yeah?” he replied, between taking a drink of water and placing it back on the table.
“I saw some young children coming out of a church earlier, dressed like adults at a wedding. Can you tell me what that was all about, please?”
At these words Micky almost choked in an effort not to spit out his food. “Bejasus,” he said, pugnaciously “Don’t ye have First communion in yere country at all at all?”
Frank gestured subtly at him to calm down, nodding gently in Schillerz’ direction. He turned to him more overly and said: “It’s a sort of ritual here, when the children make their communion for the first time, to get dressed up and have parties with their families. This is a very Catholic country, don’t you know.”
“I see, Schillerz responded, ponderously, “but those costumes look so expensive, while all around there seems to be so much poverty”
The tension rose, almost imperceptibly at this remark, and Frank knew he would have to choose his words carefully to quell it. “Well, you know, some of the people in this country have very little but religion to keep them going. Many children are uneducated, have little idea of the world outside. Being part of organised religion gives them a sense of belonging to something outside themselves.”
Schillerz was impressed with the clarity of his explanation, but distressed that people here clung on to old superstitions so tenaciously. In view of Micky’s reaction to his earlier question, he thought it better not to comment on this, and instead meekly asked if the people around this table had been through these rituals themselves. This suddenly seemed to animate everyone. Frank was the first with his tale of how he had never seen a photographer before and could not be persuaded to stand still and was seeing little squiggles for days after the flash met his eyes, then Micky, who came from a protestant area of Belfast told everyone about the proddies throwing rocks and the various ways in which this gesture was reciprocated. At first Schillerz listened to these stories with the curiosity of a visitor, but then it occurred to him how these stories wove a tapestry of religious obsession, which disturbed him slightly. How could such outmoded customs still play such an important part in the community life of what was considered by many an Aryan nation?
His cogitations were again interrupted by Frank. “Bejasus, Hermann, but yer an awful one for drifting off into reveries. I’d love to give a penny for yer thoughts.”
Hermann looked a bit confused. “A penny for my thoughts? What does this mean?”
“It means… Oh, never mind,, I’ll explain in the morning. Yeh must be wantin’ to turn in. Ye’ve had such a tirin’ day, yeh must be knackered.” Confusion again. “Knackered? What is knackered”
Frank laughed and patted him on the back “It means very tired, that’s all. I don’t suppose they teach you words like that in English class in Germany.”
More images of The Blue Angel flashed across Schillerz’ mind. He shook his head, as if to dispel them, then said, “Yes, I am indeed very tired. Do you have a place where I can sleep?” “Well, it’s not the Berlin Alexanderplatz but we won’t have you sleeping out in the shed with the cows either.”
As Schillerz had not quite gotten to grips with the concept of ironic understatement, he was unsure of how to react. He looked at Frank briefly, blankly, worriedly, before he was led in the direction of a nod from the later and the words “c’mon”. As Davie started to clean up the plates grudgingly, shaking his head as he scraped much of the meat into the bin, Schillerz was led through the corridors and up the stairs to a door where, predictably by now, the paint was peeling off, the doorknob was stiff and which any attempt to open was met with obstreperous creaking. Once again Frank went through the motions of making sure the curtains were closed. There seemed to be no electricity in this room, so Frank reached for the candle that lay on the chest of drawers and took some matches out of his pocket. Schillerz noticed the word “friendly” on the matchbox. He wondered what could be amiable or approachable about sticks that caused fire. Was there a cult of fire worshipping in this country as well? Not it seemed, if Frank was a typical native he lit the candle with the precision of a surgeon and blew out the match instantaneously, almost reflexively. Then he turned to Schillerz and spoke to him in hushed, intimate tones. He moved his body close to him, as if shielding out any interference. His movements frightened Schillerz a little, but there was nothing threatening in his tone of voice.
“Listen, Hermann, how many people did you encounter on your way here?”
He hesitated, clearly not having anticipated the question. “Oh, just one, I suppose, the man who carried me on his horse and cart.”
Frank seemed eager for more information, trying to elicit it with vigorous hand movements. Schillerz’ response was stuttering, indecisive. “He was old, I suppose, wore clothes like most of the people here, his accent seemed strange at first, but now it seems you all talk this way here.” He sniggered, apprehensively, hoping Frank would not pursue the matter any further. However, Frank responded with the merest rictus, and said: “Look, our position here is a dangerous one. We have many enemies, in the Gardai, among the big farmers, and even among the small peasants. There could be reward money for turning us in. that’s why I have to take all these precautionary measures. Now if you can’t remember anything about the guy who brought you here, that’s regrettable, but understandable. If you can, try and think and tell me in the morning.” Schillerz nodded. “Have you got everything you need?” Schillerz looked around, decided there was nothing he was lacking, and nodded his head. “Alright, then. ‘Night”, Frank said, and patted him on the shoulder, and left the room.
Schillerz sat down on the bed. He found it hard , but reasoned that his fatigue would drag him into the arms of sleep. He looked around the room. Dusty threads of gossamer hung forlornly from its corners, paint peeled from the walls forming arbitrary, rorschachian shapes. A picture of the Virgin Mary in an Umbrian Valley hung from the wall. Inside the unvarnished, rickety frame, behind the smudgy glass, she seemed to exist in another world, a world of ataraxic bliss to which she invited Schillerz with her pellucid hands. He became a bit more sympathetic to his hosts and their compatriots, understood a little more how religion could be seductive to people living in such a bleak land.
He turned away. This was his first chance for uninterrupted reflection, and there was much to reflect upon. He thought about his hosts, strange, paradoxical people who ate mushy, soggy food with their hands, yet could discuss the work of Italian philosophers he had never heard of. He had been brought up to believe that only in a world of order such as the national socialist leadership planned could intellect and culture exist, but these people seemed incongruent with this thesis. He decided to stop thinking about this, worrying what labyrinthine mazes of cognitive dissonance it could lead him down. Anyway, he had more immediate worries. He had yet to radio home, but felt so tired that he decided it had better wait ‘till morning. He should also brush his teeth, he was sure he had brought a toothbrush and toothpaste, though that would entail getting up from bed. He would have to do this in a while, but for now he would enjoy his chance to rest.
In his queasy, exhausted state the lower half of his body exerted an increasing grip on his cognitive processes. Disappointed by the apparent absence of pretty girls here in Ireland, he thought of the frauliens back home, with their blonde tresses and their rosy red skin and their penetrating eyes and high, prominent cheekbones. He felt a tumescence developing in his trousers, but knowing he would never have enough energy or stimulation to masturbate, he decided merely to stroke it gently. This relaxed him, made him feel relatively at ease with himself. He turned over, awkwardly, and looked up at the picture of the virgin. How would he react if he was Irish? With terror, foreboding of a Dantesque, Boschian inferno that awaited him for being guilty of such thoughts? He did not need to have any such fears. He was above them. He was one of the ubermenschen, was born to lead, not to follow the rules of the ancients. He was the new man.
Even the fuehrer, like Bismarck, Frederick the Great and Barbarossa before him needed sleep, he reasoned as his eyes grew heavy and his thoughts less and less coherent. He also remembered something about Alexander the Great holding a marble while he slept, but couldn’t remember what it was, exactly. Surely the fuehrer had gone to sleep once in his life without having brushed his teeth? An ugly image of a crowd at Nuremberg all smelling his halitosis flashed in his mind, forcing him to toss and turn frantically in an effort to dispel it. What strange tricks the mind played on us in our moments of fatigue. What demons from the core of our being were exorcised in this brief, ephemeral moment of weakness. His eyes became heavier, his nasal breathing more and more intense and repetitive.


Suddenly he was back home in Bavaria. He was on top of one of the hill, looking down through the mist on the red-topped houses below. As he looked down, he started to notice people leaving the houses and streaming on to the streets. His curiosity inspired, he started to run down the mountain. He didn’t feel the wind blowing in his face or the dewy grass under his feet, just the thrill of descent. Occasionally he tripped on a stone and went flying into the air only to float back down again and resume his stride. As he closer to the houses below, he saw young children leaving the houses, the girls dressed in white lace, the boys dressed in black suits. They all walked forward as if drawn by some inexorable force, all bearing looks of almost cadaverous severity. He followed them, curious to know where they were going. Though he must have stood out with his height, his age and his dress, none of them looked at him, instead they all looked forward, like horses wearing blinkers. Their ranks swelled as they moved on, more of them streaming down from the mountains and the valleys below, coming from cottages, behind hedges, out of wells. They came closer to a city, lined with trees and percolated with canals, a city of gothic spires and Tudor panels, where there was no litter on the streets and where the air smelled of roses. People waved from these buildings at the gathering throng below, who remained impassively fixated on looking forward. They approached a stadium where they were greeted with wrought iron gate that seemed to open as a result of the sheer force of their presence. They entered, arranged themselves into lines, and awaited the entry of an older man. He stood on the stage, raised his arms aloft. At hat moment there was a crash of thunder and the skies opened, releasing a torrent of potatoes. He cowered, held his head in his hands trying to protect himself from this inundation. The pain was intense, but he looked around and saw the young children catching the potatoes and planting them in the ground. New potato plants grew instantaneously and their leaves started to strangle his neck. Then the ground started to shake and a new crop of potatoes burst volcanically from the earth, and fell again, unleashing another bout of bruising injuries. He started to run, but there was no escape from the deluge.


He woke. He was confused, at first he did not know where he was, what day it was, or how he got here. Then he heard a knocking on the outside door of the house, and mumblings from downstairs. As the knocking grew louder he started to worry that something might be going wrong. He remembered the way the man on the horse and cart looked at him and franks warnings about informers. Then he heard footsteps coming up the stairs and saw the door of his room flying open, with Frank following in it’s frenetic wake. Before he knew it, Frank’s thick wrists were shaking him out of his lethargy.
“Who did you tell you were coming here?” he yelled. Schillerz, too dazed to respond, tried to string a coherent answer together, but could not do so before Frank again yelled, even louder: “Who did you fucking tell you were coming here, you fuckin’ eejit?
“I told you everything before. I have not hidden anything from you. Why are you so angry? “Why am I angry? Because it’s one o’ fucking clock in the morning and there’s fucking police outside our fucking door looking for us. C’mon, get the fuck out of bed and come with us.” As Schillerz reaction was less than instantaneous, he again shouted out: “Get the fuck out of bed! They’ll be knocking down our fucking door within two or three minutes.”
He did as he was told, and fumbled around looking for his clothes and his bag. He struggled to get them on quickly, thought as he was doing do that it might be easier if he took it more slowly. Frank said, c’mon. I’ll take yer fucking bag, you follow us out. And get a fucking move on!”
Frank’s footsteps could be heard thundering down the stairs, and Schillerz thought it prudent to follow in their path. He put on his shoes, tied his laces, felt around the floor briefly to see if there was anything he had left behind, and then, satisfied there was not, he left the room and went downstairs. The four people he had been talking to earlier were there, all agitated and suspicious in varying degrees. As Schillerz came down the stairs, Frank, not wanting to waste any time, said: “Here’s the plan. We get out the back door and run like hell through the fields. When we get to the forest we hide out, then we use Hermann’s radio to get help. You do have a fuckin’ radio, I assume?” His glance darted pugnaciously in Schillerz’ direction.
“Yes I do…”
“Good. Here’s your fucking bag.” He shoved Schillerz’ bag into his chest, almost winding him in the process. “Alright, I know these parts pretty well. If ye all follow me we’ll be alright.”
Frank opened the back door as gently as he could, though a knocking on the front door gave him a brief window in which he could make some more noise. At that point he yanked it open and ran out, gesturing to the others to follow him. Schillerz did so, through the muddy puddles and the waste ground at the back of the house, over the hedge, to the fields beyond. He noticed an intense, noxious odour emanating from his shoes and he figures that he had walked through dogshit as well as muddy puddles, something that would have bothered him more at another time. It seemed in this field more potatoes grew. Instead of following right behind Frank, he reasoned it would be better to run in another drill. Then he noticed he was running faster than Frank, and looked behind him at the others, who were running even slower, even though none of them came close to matching Frank’s girth. Were they scared to run faster than him because he was the leader? If so, what sort of people were they?
The need to run faster became more imperative when he saw figures in the distance climbing over the hedge and knew they could only be the police. He upped the tempo, leaving Frank far behind. At the same time the others also ran faster, but he was evidently fitter than any of them. As he ran he kept looking behind but as the distance between him and the others grew his view of events faded. Then he heard a howling in the distance and assumed Frank or one of the others had been caught. If it was Frank, then his girth was clearly of no use to him now. As he view was diminished he assumed the same was true of his antagonists. He stopped, pricked up his ears to hear whatever sounds he could, but there was only silence. What had happened? Had they all been caught? It seemed unlikely. Perhaps some of them had gambled on hiding for a few hours in the hope that they could not be found. He thought maybe he should do the same.
He lay down in one of the drills. There was still no sound, but for the crickets and the gentle hissing of the soil absorbing water. Still, he thought it prudent to lie down, he feared the police may be playing cat and mouse with him, waiting for him to make the first move. But then how long could this go on? They could theoretically keep this game going forever, or else they could search the fields and he would surely be found eventually. But if he got up, he might be seen and this would give his presence away. On the other hand, he would be much easier to locate during the day. He had heard of a decadent Jewish-Czech writer called Kafka who wrote of situations like these. As far as he knew, his books had all been destroyed in Germany because of their unreality. His own situation, however, was not unreal. It was as real as it got. And it required instantaneous decision making. He thought it best to lie in the drill for an hour or so, after which time he would be satisfied that the police had gone. Then he would wander around until he found some place of shelter. He would radio home and request orders.
What motivated this decision? Was it instinct, or the product of his training? Was it good Teutonic sense, the pragmatism of his race? Or was he being forced to act this way be some higher power? Whatever force led him to make this decision now led him to lie down in a field of potatoes for the second time in the space of a few hours. If he was familiar with Lear’s words “As flies to wanton boys we are to the gods” they would probably have some into his head right now but he wasn’t. Up ‘til now he hadn’t been a great bibliophile. He had read Mein Kampf of course, found it difficult to get through, unsurprisingly, it was the work of a genius, a cultured intellectual who was changing history. He was just an ordinary man, a cog in the machine. And he had seen movies, lots of them, from the Lang and Sternberg movies he had seen as a kid to the films of Refienstahl, and Jud Suss, The Wandering Jew and other National Socialist flicks. They had done much to shape his weltanschaaung, but could throw little light on his current situation. He couldn’t see the symbolism of being ground down in the dirt by forces beyond his own control. He didn’t know the psychological importance of potatoes for the Irish, or for downtrodden peoples elsewhere, only that they yielded a large amount per acre, and that this gave them enormous importance for the Reich. Hoping to find something of value in this forlorn experience, he recalled his childhood astronomy lessons and looked up towards the stars. Alas, this was Ireland and the sky was overcast. He could make out a faint glimmer of the moon behind some of the clouds, but that was all. He turned back down, towards the earth. He tried to run his fingers through the soil, but found it too impenetrable. He held his fingers tightly together and made indentations in the soil to loosen it. Then he picked some up and let it run through his fingers. He couldn’t really tell if the soil was rich or poor with only his tactile modality, but the process gave him an activity that occupied his body, if not his mind, and for this he was grateful. After a while he started to feel sleepy again, but feared the consequences of dropping off. He would have to remain alert, so he kept on playing with the soil. He thought of digging up a potato plant that would give him something to play with and keep him from falling asleep, but he figured that that would consume a lot of energy and perhaps make too much noise, drawing attention to himself. He continued to play with the soil, making a bigger and bigger hole with his efforts. He thought of how the same patch of soil was probably tilled a thousand times by people who thought nothing of it but now it had assumed a huge importance for him. Was he going mad, attributing such importance to a piece of soil in a field in Ireland? Hopefully not, as it was only this soil that could keep him awake. To do so was becoming a bigger challenge, as he again felt his eyes grow heavy, he tried to manoeuvre himself into the most uncomfortable position possible in the hope that this would be so unconducive to sleep that he could only remain awake. He shuffled down the drill ‘til he came to a point where his head was now in the hole he had dug. He did not think anyone, not the laziest Slav or the most decadent long-haired degenerate, could sleep in such conditions. But after a while it seemed that he, an upright, well-bred teuton might do exactly that. He thought frantically, at least as frantically as it was possible to think in such a state of fatigue, about how to avoid this fate. He wondered if he had any stimulants to keep him awake in his bag. He remembered being given a pack of various sorts of medication before he left, but it would surely be impossible to tell which was which. What if he took, for instance, a laxative by mistake? Then, surely, he would have reached the point where thing could not get any worse.
Then, as in Triumph das Willens, a saviour began to emerge from the sky. He heard the distant rumble of thunder and knew that rain was on it’s way. He knew, that, paradoxically, he could relax now because there was little or no danger that he would fall asleep. He figured that if it rained, visibility would decrease, the cops, if they were still there, would go home, and he could find a better place to hide. He lay down, let himself get as comfortable as he could, waited for the sound of the thunder to get louder. Then he was struck, not by soft Irish rain, but by a horrible thought: What if it rained really heavily and his bag was not waterproof? Surely his radio would then be damaged and he would not be able to radio home. Then where would he be? There were words to describe this hypothesis, but they were not words a loyal national socialist would use. He felt the surface of his bag. He was reasonably satisfied that it was waterproof, but to be safe he moved his other possessions around a bit to make sure the radio was not making any contact with the surface of the bag. As he was doing so, he heard the thunder grow closer. He did not want to get up until it was actually raining, so when he was satisfied that his radio was safe, he used his bag as a pillow and lay down again. He was just starting to relax again when the thunder rumbled loudly and the skies opened on top of him. This was not soft Irish rain, though. This was a monsoon. He got up, pulled his jacket over his head and started to walk quickly through the drill. The leaves of the plants grew wet quickly and as he ruffled them, the water fell on him. The soil quickly started to grow muddy and he found his balance harder to retain. The top of his jacket quickly became saturated, so he decided to put the bag on top of his head to afford him extra protection, but then he thought the radio might be damaged, and anyway it was affecting his ability to retain his balance. Instead he clutched it under his arm tightly and tried to run faster, but found the mud getting deeper and deeper and the splashing getting more and more intense. He felt the water beginning to penetrate his boots and saturate his socks, producing the sort of noise that a snail made when it was squashed. It was a noise that disgusted him, embarrassed him even, even though there was no-one else around. Living in the chaotic land of anarchy had not yet made him unselfconscious.
He was coming to the end of the field of potatoes. He knew because the plants were getting thinner and further apart. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, though, as it was so dark and so rainy. Soon, though, a hedge came into view, or at least the faint silhouette of one. Something about its aspect led him to believe that he was on a plateau, and that there might be a valley on the other side of this hedge. What led him to believe this? A Jungian folk knowledge of agricultural topography? Or the sense of unbounded optimism that still shone in his Teutonic breast, even in this, surely the most abject or circumstances?
Whatever it was, it proved to be right, because he was indeed standing on a plateau, and when he struggled though the wet and thorny briers a vista was visible to him even through the dark and the rain. He could make out hedges, fields, and… was that a copse in the distance? He did not wait to hear his own response, just threw his bag onto the field below and jumped after it. His landing was little improvement on his parachute jump earlier that day, and he had difficulty dragging his feet out of the mud. He picked up his bag and tried to run, but level of water saturation made this impossible. He walked as quickly as he could, focussed now on the ostensible copse in the distance. He imagined what this place would look like in the daytime, an evocation of Beethoven’s pastoral symphony perhaps, with lambs leaping and cows drinking from euphonious streams. Where were the lambs and the cows now? Locked up, he hoped, in a dry warm shed where they would be unable to make any from of contact with him. Was this not the greatest of injustices, that a mere animal was afforded shelter while he, in a country that he was trying to welcome into the greatest empire the world had ever known, was forced to struggle through ankle-deep mud in this torrential rain? In a more settled state he would have thought of Hegel and his historical dialectics, but he could hardly have been in a less settled state. His only aim now was to reach somewhere dry and the copse in front of him seemed to offer the only such possibility. Then it suddenly struck him that he had learned in German physics that standing under a tree in a lightning storm was dangerous. Was the same true of Irish physics? Yes, of course it was, we were all bound by the same physical laws. The lack of sleep was patently getting to him now.
When he got to the copse, he hoped, this problem would be resolved. Then, paradoxically, he would want the rain to continue, as this would minimise the chances of anyone coming to look for him. The copse was coming closer and revealing itself to be indeed a copse. There was one more hedge to surmount before he reached it, but this time he thought, as he could not get any wetter, he would try to find a gate of a gap of any sort. There was what appeared to be a gate, which by the standards of the day so far was probably a piece of good fortune. He now realised what a relative term that was. When he reached the gate, he gripped it with one of his hands, only to find it covered it rust, a piece of which made a sharp impact on his hand. He thought he might be bleeding, so sucked his hand to try and get the taste of blood, but there was none. Was this because he was not bleeding or because the rain had washed the blood away? He placed his hands inside his jacket and wiped them dry, then bent over to keep his hand dry and let any blood that was to come out spill. He was indeed bleeding. Still, he would have to take a chance on cutting the other hand, so he felt the top of the gate gently to make sure it was not rusty. Then he grabbed it and jumped over. He ran towards the copse now, impervious to the mud splashing beneath his feet. When he felt the rustling of dry leaves under his feet he felt the relief that only comes from the darkest despair, an ephemeral that lasted only as long as it took him to realise that his clothes were soaking wet and that he had nothing to change into. He wished now he had his parachute with him. He sat down, fumbled around in his bag to see if there was anything that would keep him warm. There was indeed a thin waterproof sheet, doubtless put there for just such an occasion. Those people back home thought of everything didn’t they? He started to untie his boots, wished they did not go quite so far up his ankles. He took off his coat and pants, felt his shirt, and when satisfied that is was not all that wet, manoeuvred his bag into the position where the driest side was up, and lay down and tried to sleep. He hoped his dreams would be more pleasant this time.
There did not seem to be too much danger of nightmares in the immediate future, as his dryness was not matched by warmness. He felt a shivering come over his whole body, starting around his ankles and moving up ‘til his teeth started to chatter the way he imagined a skeleton would if attacked by impatient grave robbers. He gritted his teeth to reduce the chattering, but only found that this increased the shivering in the rest of his body, as if it was acting in accordance with one of the laws of thermodynamics; that energy could neither be created or destroyed. He could not remember the name of the German physicist who formulated that particular axiom, but once again, it seemed to be true outside Germany. He started to feel increasingly groggy, but sleep continued to elude him. He tossed and turned to no effect other than to bruise his sides and limbs as they brushed against the rocks and pebbles he lay on. His thoughts grew increasingly incoherent as he entered the phase where he would have been going through REM sleep, which, at the time was a phenomenon without a name. He would start to think of one thing and an image, a thought, a flash of recollection would dart in from another part of his brain like an ariel attack during the blitzkrieg. Yes, that was a good simile: it seemed the inside of his head was becoming a theatre of war, one with rapidly shifting patterns of allegiance, like the Thirty Years war or the Italian wars of the cinquecento.. At one point his memories from home would dominate the land, then his thoughts about the last twenty-four hours would launch a blistering panzer attack. Just as it was driven back, a division of sexual fantasies would coming swarming in from the air with shattering repercussions. Yet his mind would remain fertile through all this chaos, it seemed that, as his comrades were finding on the Eastern Front, there were always reinforcements. Then there would be moments of lucidity, like brief, fleeting ceasefires when he would try to decide if he preferred this anguish to the nightmares he would have to try to make sense of in the morning. He reasoned that the nightmares were better as they just left you waking in a cold sweat that was preferable to spending the whole night in a cold sweat. Maybe dreams acted as a mechanism for flushing out unwanted thoughts. Was he the first to think of this? He knew not. He would look it up when he got home, if he ever got home, that was. These moments of lucidity had passed, and again there was chaos, and the another moment of lucidity where he would wonder what he looked like on the outside, if there was any way the inner chaos could be replicated on the outside. He thought of all the kids in the Hitlerjugend with their identical haircuts and uniforms. It seemed as though they all had the same thought, the same feelings. But surely some of them new anguish like this, underneath the surface, behind the eyes, in each person’s own private realm. Perhaps even the fuehrer knew moments of anguish like this. If he knew music like Mussourgsky’s Night on a Bare Mountain it would probably have come into his head right now but the musical part of his brain was crammed with Strauss waltzes and Lehar arias, none of which were particularly apposite to this suffering. In another moment of lucidity, he tried to make lists of different things, a tactic that had led him into the arms of Morpheus in previous fits of insomnia, but this time it failed. He had gotten to the seventh most beautiful girl he had ever seen when he totally forgot what he was thinking about and only got to who came ninth in the last Bundesliega before the war broke out. It seemed he was doomed to a nigh without sleep. He thought of taking out his radio and contacting his superiors, but he would surely sound so incoherent that they would assume it was some sort of diversionary tactic from the British. Anyway, there was little they could do to help him sleep, short of singing a lullaby, which he did not think they would be favourably disposed towards doing. No, this anguish would surely continue until morning. When it came, it came not with Homeric rosy fingers but with a slouching, lugubrious gait that could not shake off the mist nor suck the moisture back into the atmosphere. He guessed the guys in North Africa got the long end of the stick on the rosy-fingered dawn thing. Nevertheless, the pale grey light did reveal a pretty rustic scene. He got up, shook his weary limbs, and wandered around. It seemed he was alone in this world. The cows evidently were still locked up in their sheds, but judging by the lengths of grass in the pastoral fields they would be back before long to chew of the wet green cud. A stream passed by through a ditch near the copse, gushingly after the previous nights deluge. In the distance, through the mist, he could see hills rolling and figured that was the way to safety. Yet in all his hours of hypercogitation he had not come up with a way to reach this destination.
So he walked. He did not walk in any particular direction, except away from where he was coming. He wasn’t even sure why he walked, perhaps he was trying to clear his head, shake his brain cells into some sort of cohesion before he could radio home and look for help. He was reaching the stage in crisis management where the crisis doesn’t seem like a crisis for a brief while. If his plight was that of a car falling into the sea, this would be the moment where he was waiting for the car to be fully submerged before he waited for the water pressure to be neutral and opened the doors. His mind was briefly blank, as if all his thoughts had exhausted themselves and gone for a rest. With his bag hanging over his shoulder and his boots dragging through the mud, he felt more like a gypsy than a soldier of the Reich. He rubbed his chin, felt the strange, unfamiliar gristle of stubble, looked at how long his fingernails had grown. Yet he did not fell ignominious, as he would have at home, but liberated. He felt no sudden desire to rip is bag open and look for his razor and his wash things. No-one was watching him here, even if they were they would not know who he was. Even if he radioed home, they would not know what he looked like. If he was a bit more coherent, this freewheeling attitude would have surprised him, but he had been through too much to ever be surprised by anything right now. He was also reaching the stage where the unfamiliar, or unheimlich as his compatriots would call it, was becoming briefly familiar, in the ephemeral period before another culture shock would come along and disorientate him. The rolling hills, the wet, dewy grass with it’s clumps of daisies, the deciduous trees and the untidy hedgerows all felt Heimlich to him all of a sudden. He walked through these fields as if he had been doing so all of his life, though he did not even know where he was going.
He took a look at his watch, saw that it was around 5 in the morning. He wouldn’t have to worry about cows grazing for a while. So he breathed in the fresh country air, listened to the birdsong, and walked. It felt liberating to walk without any destination in mind, to be able to saunter aimlessly rather than march in unison with a hundred others. He felt a contentment, far from ataraxia or nirvana, but much closer to either of these sensations than he had known in a while. As he walked down the hill towards another hedge, he started to feel sleepy again. He knew he could not walk much farther, and decided he would take a chance on finding a dry spot in the shelter of this hedge. As he ambled towards it, he heard the gushing of a stream and spotted a gap where it looked like he could lie down. Yes, reader, a paradox, the only dry place he could find was right next to the stream, where the trees that sucked its waters provided shelter. It seemed nature was in tune with the chaos of the last twenty-four hours of Schillerz’ life. He lay down and slotted into a comfortable position on the compressed dust, this, must be a place that was traversed quite a lot he thought, and then fell asleep.

Next thing he knows, Schillerz is being chased by a pack of hungry wolves through muddy fields through the rain. Occasionally he turns round, sees the anger on their faces, catches a glimpse of the foam dripping from their sharp, chiselled teeth and their tongues hanging out rabidly. His sweat mingles with the rain and gives him the shivers, he breathes in and out intensely. He reaches a forest where he hopes he will find a tree he can climb and find safety. He comes to a clearing where there is a fire lit. He sees a human figure standing between him and it. When he gets closer, he sees that this person is wearing a national socialist uniform. He grabs this person in a frantic combination of relief and desperation. The figure turns round. It turns out to be the fuehrer. He is relieved, momentarily. But then he notices something. The fuehrer isn’t saying anything, just breathing very deeply. Then his face starts to grow more pilose, his nose starts to extend. He is turning into a wolf. But he doesn’t make a sudden grab at Schillerz’ neck, mauling him and eating him doesn’t seem that high on his agenda. He just breathes, breathes deeply, like the sound of an infant breathing in the womb, breathing deeply.

2: Awakening

He wakes with a shudder and through the morning haze he can feel warm breath on his face. He struggles to open his eyes, and through the mist and the haze he begins to make out a face. No, actually, the first thing he notices is the hair. Long blonde curls that flow like the allegro of a Mozart symphony blow gently in the morning breeze. Then the breasts. High, round, firm, close together as if united in the attempt to break out of the confines of the check shirt in which they seem unjustly imprisoned. Then, finally, he gets a look at her face. Rosy red cheeks, prominent cheekbones, eyes of azure, and thin red lips. Then he thought he had figured what was going on. He’d had dreams like this before, dreams where he thought he was waking but was entering another dream. He knew it would be useless to pinch himself, as he would only be dreaming that he was doing so. He would just sit back and see which wild flights of fancy this dream took him on.
“So, how did you get here”, the ostensibly oneiric blonde apparition asked, in dulcet tones such as he had never heard before. His subconscious was working hard on this one.
“Oh, I, er, it’s a long story”, he struggled to reply.
“I’m sure ‘tis, and it must be a really fascinating one as well. Are yeh going to tell me ‘bout it?
He was becoming less and less sure that he was dreaming. He was in a quandary. This girl was too beautiful to be real, and too real to be a dream, a ghostly apparition, perhaps, or a deathly doppelganger. He thought he would respond, and see what happened. Paradoxically, if she was real, she would probably find his story unbelievable as well, which would make telling the truth a viable option. On the other hand, news may have spread about his escape, so it might be better to recycle the Dubliner story.
“I just came down from Dublin, travelling ‘round the country for a couple of weeks. I was camping last night but my tent must have blown away in the storm.”
She looked a little disappointed, the rictus mellowing into a look of apathy. “Oh, that’s a pity. I thought you might be that German spy that supposed to be on the loose.”
Schillerz gritted his teeth. He knew he would have to be circumspect in answering this one. He feigned surprise, as best he could, and said, with eyebrows raised, “A German spy on the loose? Where did you hear this? On the radio?”
“Oh, lord, no, sure don’t yeh know about all the censorship and such, and can yeh blame them, sure wouldn’t it cause an awful panic if people knew? No, no but there’s folks in town heard some awful ruckus with the guard and everything callin’ round to the Reddy’s place and chasin’ them through the fields. But sure listen to me goin’ on. Tell us a bit about yerself. D’yeh need help lookin’ for that tent of yours?
Schillerz was flabbergasted by this logorrheic torrent of words, which it took his addled brain a few seconds to assimilate, during which he must have looked confused, and perhaps a little bit suspicious.
“Oh, no, I imagine the tent is so badly damaged that there is no hope of fixing it. I suppose I must buy a new one. But…” he paused “tell me more about this German spy. What measures are being taken to apprehend him?
Now it was the girl’s turn to look confused. Half gratified, half guilty, Schillerz instead offered “I mean, what are the… guards doing to catch him?”
“Oh, right, I see. Ah well, I heard they broke down the door and there was a chase, but yeh see, they’ve no concrete evidence that there’s a spy other than the words of a farmer who’s been known to tell tall tales on many an occasion. Still, I’d love to have met him, and heard his tales of espionage, and I’d say my dad would as well.”
“Your father? Why is this? Is he sympathetic to the…” The word “Reich” almost slipped from his lips, but he managed to stop them and instead completed the sentence with the words “Current German Government”
This elicited a burst of cachinnation like Schillerz had never heard. Not like the belly laughs of drunken Bavarians in alehouses nor the cackles of cynical Prussian abwehr officers. It was a piercing, joyous life-affirming yelp that was followed by the words, “Jaysus no, what kind of fella d’yeh think he is, goose-steppin’ round the back garden or shoutin’ at the pigs and sheep that the hour of their destiny has arrived and soon the world will be theirs. Me da, the Nazi. Jaysus, he’ll get a right laugh when hears that one.”
Schillerz was infuriated with this remark, but thought discretion was the better part of valour and bit his tongue and asked, “so what sort of man is your father?”
“Ah, sure, I suppose you’ll find out when you meet him.”
Not for the first time, Schillerz looked confused. “Why, when will I meet him?”
“Ah, sure, we cant be leavin’ yeh here in those wet clothes. We’ll have to get yeh changed and get some food in yer stomach.”
This was not enough to palliate his confusion. He tried to respond, but his thoughts were interrupted by the word “C’mon, get up and come home with us, we haven’t got all day, don’t yeh know. “
“Oh, you are inviting me home. This is most kind. Are you sure your parents will not mind?”
A brief look of melancholy passed over her face. “My mother died when I was very young. But me da’ll be delighted to see yeh. He hasn’t been up to Dublin in a long time, don’t ye know.”
Schillerz thanked her profusely, violently suppressing the gulp in his throat as he was doing so. He struggles to get off the ground, pressing his hands against the dirt, feeling the weariness in his limbs accentuate. She offers her hand, he feels a mixture of gratitude and self-pity. He isn’t conscious of the irony implicit in this situation, he doesn’t know of the history of matriarchy in this island and how there couldn’t be a bigger contrast between this tradition and the misogyny of his own state at the present moment. So is this offer of help a pivotal moment in our story, a episode that Schillerz will look back on as a moment of epiphany? Only time will tell.
In the meantime, our heroes, or our hero and our heroine as we might say these days have a less metaphorical journey to make. It’s a journey that takes them through more fields, this time illuminated by the bright light of the sun, which draws the larks from their nesting places and into the air which they fill with their song and coaxes the grasshoppers into making those little whirring noises that they make. It sucks the moisture up from the grass and turns the leaves upwards. Maybe this, Schillerz thinks, is why is was worshipped in olden times. Schillerz and the girl (he hasn’t gotten round to asking her name yet) would skip jollily through these meadows, like the two fat women in that painting by Picasso, except that it’s still a bit damp, and Schillerz isn’t feeling his best. He still has a bit of cramp. The girl is more animated, though, she waves her arms around, causing her breasts to bounce a bit, a fact that doesn’t escape his attention. Finally, in the midst of all this natural abundance, the boy diffidently reaches out and asks the girls name.
“Oh, jaysus, did I not tell yeh? ‘Tis Siobhan I’m called. And yerself?”
The grammatical formulation is strange to him but he feigns familiarity.
“I’m…. Patrick”, he says. Good choice. Irish sounding, but not terribly hard to pronounce. Connotations of both religion and patriotism.
“Patrick? Bejasus, I thought you’d have one of those West Brit names that they all have up in Dublin.”
Now he’s confused. He doesn’t know what “West Brit” means, and doesn’t know how to respond. “No, just `Patrick’”, he offers, tentatively.
“Ah, tis nothing to apologise for. Sure I’m only pulling your leg”
Now he’s terribly confused, but doesn’t want o ask what “pulling one’s leg” means for fear of looking like an idiot. He suspects from her tone that some humour is intended and laughs gently. Then there’s a moment of awkward silence. Awkward for Schillerz at least. Siobhan continues her hyperkinetic arm movements as if alone. But Schillerz feels the need to punctuate the silence by asking: “so how far is it to your father’s house?
“Ah, sure, not to far at all at all”, she says, he arm movements continuing unabated, “And sure why would you be bothered? Sure didn’t yeh come down hear to do a bit o’ walkin’ and get some fresh air into those lungs of yours.”
He realises the mistake he has made and tries to rectify it.
“Yes, Indeed, but I am eager to see your father. He sounds like such an interesting man.”
“Does he now? And don’t I interest yeh at all?”
“Yes, yes indeed”, he offers hurriedly, perhaps a little too hurriedly. “You are a lovely girl”
At this remark he notices the first display of emotion on her face. She looks at him briefly, silently, for a few seconds. He notices that her cheeks have turned redder, her arms have stopped moving, and her breasts are heaving a bit. “Do you really think so?”, she asks, coyly.
Schillerz does not know what he has gotten himself into. He gulps, breathes in deeply, says, in a voice barely audible, almost apologetic, “yes”.
She stops in her tracks. She turns around, faces him. She grabs him by the shoulders, then puts her hands around his neck. She stares at him for a second, her eyes a mixture between innocent wonder and primordial animal lust. Then she plants her lips on his. He feels a warm, moist tenderness that causes his heart to pound wildly and his temperature to rise rapidly. He feels he soft skin pressed against his stubble, wonders how this must feel to her. Then he feels her holding his hand and lifting it up to reach her hair. He accepts the invitation, and runs his fingers through her silky tresses. He feels her breasts press up against her chest, then her hands holding him tighter, her arms curled around his back. She forces herself upon him with such a momentum that he falls backwards onto the damp grass. As he lands he feels her breasts fall upon his chest, he glances down between her cleavage. She lifts her head a second, stares dreamily into his eyes. Then she starts to kiss him again, her tongue wandering around his mouth like a conquistador exploring the Amazon.
What’s going on in Schillerz’ mind when all this is happening? It’s a mixture of surprise, joy and dread. When will this stop? What does she expect in return? These questions enter his head intermittently, at other times he is willing to go wherever she will take him. He hardly even notices how wet the back of his jacket and pants have become.
She lifts up her skirt and wraps her legs around his groin, pressing her vital organs against his throbbing member. He feels little but she tosses her head back and moans. He looks around, grateful for the opportunity to check there is no-one else in these fields. She seems content to stay at this level of intimacy, which is a relief to him, as he his still a virgin and is reluctant to change this state of affairs in such a situation. She bends down to reach his face, kisses him gently, and rolls onto the grass next to him.
Then she leaps up again. “Mother of Jesus!” she shouts, ostensibly unaware of any irony this statement may conjure. “This grass is soaking wet. And you were lying down on it all the time. Yeh poor fella.”
He struggles to get an answer out. “Well, you were having such a good time, I didn’t want to spoil it for you.”
“Aw, yer such a nice fella. C’mon, so get up, we’ve got to go and meet me da.” She said, offering her hand in assistance. He is reluctant.
“Um, could we not maybe wait here a little while? We were having such a good time.” He suspects that she knows what a disingenuous question this is.
Her answer neither confirms nor denies this suspicion.
“We could, sure – if we wanted to get pneumonia. C’mon, get up while there’s still a chance yeh may survive.”
He gets up, reluctantly, wearily, apprehensively. She takes him by one of her hands, while the other arm waves around in its by now familiar patterns. “So Patrick”, she says, “D’ye prefer me to the Dublin girls?”
“Oh, Dublin girls. Yes, I have to say I’ve never met any girl in Dublin quite like you.” It’s the truth, and nothing but the truth, though it’s hardly the whole truth. Nevertheless, he’s rewarded for his partial honesty with a warm embrace.
“Ah, Patrick, yeh say such lovely things.”
“Well, you’re a really lovely girl.” He’s getting the hang of this pretty quickly, though he’s curious as to how she imagines his putative trysts with Dublin women. Does she imagine him in Dublin pubs, buying pints of Guinness for the young women there, then sneaking into some dark alley for a taste of forbidden fruit? How much further could this be from the reality of his life up to now? He realises, all of a sudden what an implausible persona he has adopted and is overcome with fear. He may be able to fool this innocent young woman but her father may be a tougher nut to crack. His pensiveness does not go unnoticed.
“You’re looking really deep in thought there, Patrick. I’d love to know what’s going on in that head of yours.”
“I’m not so sure you would”, he mumbled, under his breath.
“What was that?
“Oh, nothing, just talking to myself.”
“Ah, you city lads are so strange. Half a million of ye living together and ye end up talkin’ to yeerselves.”
This struck him as being unusually insightful and led him to suspect that she may have hidden depths, though it probably wouldn’t have had if he’d ever given the concept of urban alienation any thought. He could say little in response, hamstrung as he was by the persona he had adopted for himself. Instead he elected to make an inquiry on a subject that was obviously pressing to him.
“So how far are we from your father’s house now?”
“Well, d’ye see where the smoke is coming from over that hill?
He nodded a reluctant assent.
“Well, Patrick, ‘tis smoke that’s coming from the hearth of our humble abode.
“Patrick” gulped again. Need he have? Do you feel his pain? What sort of man do you think Siobhan’s father is? Is he an ogre, from whose clutches she escapes occasionally, to throw herself promiscuously at the first male she encounters? Or is he a permissive type who lets her live her own life the way she pleases? This is rural Ireland in the summer of 1941. It’s a place where the church have an inordinate amount of power, where information about the outside world, is hard to come by, and where the right to education isn’t yet universal. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for iconoclasm. Does any of this enter `Patrick’s’ head? What do you think?
Yeah, you probably guessed right. As the smell of the log fire burning becomes more perceptible, as the sound of chickens bleating becomes more audible, he’s not thinking of any of this, it wouldn’t matter what manner of man dwelt in this rustic idyll, our hero would still be scared shitless of meeting him. His pain is something us males can all relate to, surely. But let’s have a look at Siobhan, to see if we can gain any answers to the questions I posed above.
She’s clutching his hand tightly, leaning over to look into his eyes. She asks what the matter is, tells him he looks worried. She doesn’t quite seem to know why he should be. Does this suggest innocence or experience? Schillerz is definitely unable to provide an answer to this question himself. He can only diffidently offer the words: “I am a little nervous about seeing your father. I am unsure of what sort of man he is.”
She tosses her head back and laughs gently. “Oh is that all? I thought there was something serious on your mind. You needn’t worry ‘bout me da. I know yer goin’ to like him. Oh, and listen, all that stuff about a German spy being on the loose was just a joke.”
“What?”, he asked, looking a bit too alarmed.
“Yeah”, she replied, impervious to his shock. “I have a bit of a tendency to make up tall stories, as you’ll grow to realise.”
As she said these words she clutched his hand gently. She opened the gate to the garden where the chickens were running around. They weren’t like the chickens he used to see back home. Less uniform in many ways, different sizes, shapes, colours. Yet they seemed happy in their own way, shielded as they were from the conflagration engulfing the rest of the world. Their coop was painted a bright red the same colour as a small, ramshackle wheelbarrow that was still wet after the shower the previous night. There were a few beds of vegetables, some, Schillerz guessed were carrots and turnips, as well as the inevitable potatoes. The house was whitewashed, with flowers hanging from some of the windows. The roof was missing a few tiles, which all added to the impression of dishevelment. She led him up the pathway to the house, holding his hand tightly to make sure he didn’t trip over any of the cobblestones. She pushed the door open, it didn’t escape Schillerz’ attention that she didn’t need a key. The door creaked open slowly, as Siobhan made an effort to push it she cast an apologetic glance in Schillerz’ direction. It might have been a moment of epiphany, the moment he realised that he was falling in love with this woman, if it wasn’t for the nervous panic that was causing him to shiver as if trapped in a room filled with poisonous spiders. When the door finally opened, a pigeon fluttered desperately out, displaying even more panic than Schillerz himself. “Must’ve gotten in through one of the windows”, said Siobhan, impervious to his pain. As it regained its composure and made a Daedalean thrust for the sun, Schillerz wondered if he, too, would soon be making such a desperate rush for liberty from this place. As the door opened fully, he heard music that might have suggested otherwise. A gentle, wistfully melancholic orchestral piece that a more cultured person might have recognised as the slow movement from Beethoven’s 9th came from a scratchy turntable to fill the houses corridors with its yearning for tranquillity and brought a modicum of relaxation to Schillerz’ tormented psyche. As he entered the building, he was confronted with a cornucopia of images that dragged him back down to the land of cognitive dissonance. All manner of tapestries hung from the walls, bearing images from cultures of which Schillerz knew little, but which dazzled him with their polychromatic visual splendour all the same. Then a smell seemed to caress the insides of his nostrils gently, piquant but stinging. Then he noticed the books lining the sides of the walls. Why were they not up on bookshelves, like at home, these dog-eared, yellowing, dust-covered tomes? And more importantly, more fundamentally, what manner of man lived in such a wildly incongruous place? He looked to Siobhan to give him an answer, but could not think of the words to frame the question tactfully. She knew what was on his mind, though, and called out: “Da!” “In the living room” came the reply in a deep, slightly tremulous but at the same time authoritative voice. She led Schillerz silently to the door of the living room, leaned in and inquired: “Da?” “yes?”, came the considered, but slightly preoccupied answer. “I’ve got someone with me.” She paused for a second. “A fella” “Oh, well then, bring him in”
If Schillerz didn’t know what the word “relief” meant, then he did now. Siobhan again took him by the hand and led him gently into the room. When he saw the “living room” he knew that whoever lived here spent much of his living time in the pursuit of reading. Entering this room reminded him of the time his parents took him to visit the library in Munich, except where there was a stuffy clinical air about that, here was a anarchic arrangement. Aside from the books that covered the shelves, there were also books on the floor, some open on desks. He would like to look through them some time, but first the task of confronting their owner awaited him. At least he assumed the person sitting with his back to him leaning back on a chair, his right hand clutching a open book, the fingers of his left running through his longish, unruly grey hair, was their owner, and Siobhan’s father. Schillerz watched him turn over the page of the book he was reading with his fingers, which seemed to require much effort on his part. He closed the book, let the chair gently rest on the ground, and turned round. Schillerz was unsure if he had ever seen such a man before. His nose was prominent like that of the bird he had seen fly through the doorway. He bore a small, pointed, grey beard at the tip of his chin. But the most prominent thing about him was his eyes. They seemed penetrating, like a more benign version of a Gestapo officers, and somehow full of wisdom, as if the collective knowledge from all his books had left an indelible mark on the eyes which had run over their contents. It seemed life in general had left his mark on this man. His skin was wrinkled, and he moved with slow, considered actions. He looked briefly at Schillerz, seemed to absorb a great deal about him as he rubbed his beard. Then, slowly, he offered him his hand. Schillerz shook it firmly, perhaps a bit too firmly, as the old man recoiled slightly. Instinctively, reactively, Schillerz offered his apologies, while Siobhan tipped her forehead in anxiety. “It’s alright”, said the old man, rubbing his hand gently, “I’ve just become a little arthritic in my old age.” But we’re being terribly impolite. Siobhan, will you get a chair for this man, and let him sit down and tell us about himself.” While she went to go and get a chair, Schillerz interjected, a little defensively, “Oh, I’m sure you must have more to tell me about your life, the books you have read and… the places you have been, things you have done.” “I love the pregnant pause in that statement, young man. Very Chelonian.” The use of this unfamiliar term sent Schillerz into another blind panic. He gulped and said, “I beg your pardon, sir?” Looking disappointed, the old man said, “You don’t have to use archaic terms of deference in this house. You reminded me of a character in a play by Chekov, a Russian dramatist from the turn of the century, the way you paused in the middle of that sentence. You can find his plays…” he scanned the room briefly, “up on that shelf there”, pointing to a shelf at the top. You’re right in assuming that I’ve read a lot. Very perceptive. Yes, I’ve been to many places and done many things. But please, tell me a little bit more about yourself. What’s your name? Whereabouts are you from? How did you and up in this neck of the woods?”
As this torrent of words abated and Siobhan entered with a chair and gave her father a brief, knowing glance, Schillerz considered his response. As he tried to make himself comfortable in the chair, he said, “Well, my name’s Patrick, I’m from Dublin, I’m travelling round the country, I lost my tent in the storm last night, and your daughter said I could sleep here. I trust this is not a problem…” The old man’s dismissive hand answered this question. Then he scratched his beard again and said, “Y’know, you sound like you come from a respectable Dublin family, yet you’ve never heard of Chekov. Have you never been to the Abbey or the Gate at all?” realising he needed his wits about him, Schillerz reasoned that these places must be famous Dublin theatres, and said, “my parents were respectable people, but they lost a lot of money during the revolution. Unfortunately I never had enough money to go to the theatre.” The old man nodded his head, satisfied, it seemed, at least for the moment. Sounding melancholy, he shook his head and said, “ah yes, I’ve heard this story before. Your family gave up all they had for freedom and were given no reward. It always happened. It happened in Germany too, the night of the long knives. Schillerz suppressed the gulp in his throat but could not stop his eyebrows from rising. He said “I’m not sure what you’re referring to”, unable to conceal his irritation.
The old man glanced at him briefly, contemplatively, and said: “y’know, I try to be like a modern Coleridge…” he saw the blank look of non-recognition on Schillerz’ face, breathed in and said: “Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the last man ever reputed to have read everything that was ever read. That was over a century ago, and now of course, it’s impossible, undesirable even. But I try to keep myself informed about what’s going on in the world. I read a lot, as you can see, and when you do, well, you see certain patterns, certain analogies. Now the so-called night of the long knives in Germany seven or eight years ago, when Hitler tried to disassociate himself from his thuggish working class with acts of thuggery that none of the SA would ever have contemplated….. that strikes me as being something you could relate to.” He looked up, to see if he had made any impression on Schillerz, established a bond, or inspired some lateral thinking on his part. What he saw was a face that was on the surface merely confused, but was merely a facade for a wide range of sensations, anger, that allied propaganda would put this spin on National Socialist history, surprise that this man in another part of the world would have devoted so much time to thinking about it, and fear that he was obviously in the hands of someone who neither had, nor could ever be convinced to have, any sympathy for his movement. He was dumbstruck by these conflicting thoughts, could only mutter, to the old mans disappointment, “I never thought of it that way.” The old man looked apologetic. “Well, that’s understandable. You’re young, you’ve got lots of other things on your mind, raging hormones… I’m sorry for inflicting my historical theories on you like that. I don’t get so many visitors these days, lots of people off to the war don’t you know, I miss the thrill of a really intellectual conversation, it’s something Siobhan, though I love her more dearly than anyone else in the world, can never offer me, though I’m making some progress with her. But tell me, do you need some rest? You seem a little flustered. Siobhan can make up a bed for you in the spare room if you wish.” Schillerz first thought was how much the Irish liked the sound of their own voices. His second was that a rest was, at this juncture, an appealing prospect, a chance to clear his head before he radioed home with God knows what story to his superiors. “Are you sure it is no problem?” was his meek response. It was met with another dismissive wave, which paused suddenly in mid-air as the old man asked: “One thing though.” Schillerz shuddered. “If you’re going to stay in my house, I’m going to have to know your name.” Relieved, Schillerz told him it was Patrick and saw the old man’s hand lower. He raised it again, this time to shake and say “I’m Tomas. Tomas O’ Grady. But you can call me Tom. If you go out into the kitchen and ask Siobhan she can make up a room for you. We’ll have dinner ready for you whenever you want it.” Not even the memory of his last Irish meal could diminish Schillerz relief at this offer. He shook Tom’s hand gently, thanked him effusively, and exited to try and find the kitchen.

He walked through the corridor till he found the smell of exotic spices drew him to what must surely be the kitchen. When he entered he knew that this was Siobhan’s domain. In place of the ramshackle anarchy of the reading room, here was an ordered environment that he could feel more at home in. he noticed the pots and pans hanging from the walls, the polished surfaces of the cooker and the way the vegetables were arranged to be prepared for the dinner. What drew his attention most was the spice rack. He looked at the exotic names that were written in highly stylised handwriting and taped to the old jam-jars that housed cardamoms, tamarind, saffron, turmeric, cayenne and many other ingredients that he had never heard of. He wondered where they had been acquired from in this time of shortage and uncertainty, and what they tasted like. He did not imagine any of them ever being the ingredients of a bratwurst or a schnitzel. He was just opening the jar of cardamoms and releasing their benign, beguiling odour into the air when Siobhan re-entered the room.
“So, you’re going to do the cooking for us today, then, Patrick. Ah well, I s’pose I can go in and relax for the rest of the day. Call me when you’re ready, then.”
Panickingly, he responded, “No, no, I was just looking, I don’t know how to….”
“Will yeh relax, boy, sure I’m only pulling your leg. Don’t yeh know we’d never ask a guest to do the cooking for us here in this house?”
With a mixture of relief and embarrassment, he replied: “Oh I see. Right. Well, um your father said that it was possible for me to stay here tonight and he said it was possible for me to stay here tonight.”
At these words her eyebrows raised every so slightly, almost imperceptibly, and her lips curled up into the merest rictus. Then she started running the fingers of her left hand through her curls and said, seeming much shier than usual: “Oh, well, we’d better go and get a room ready for you upstairs then”
Peculiarly, the obvious flirtatiousness of her reaction made little impression on Schillerz, who was still fascinated by the vast array of spices and condiments on display in the kitchen. “Oh, thank you, he said. Look…I’m sorry for poking around your kitchen like this, I know it’s a bit of a liberty, but I was just curious as to where all these spices came from.”
“Oh,” she said, a little disappointed that he had not picked up on the signals she was emitting. “Da collects them, on his travels, or he used to, at least, before me ma died. He always said he’d travel again as soon as I grew old enough to take care of myself, but now he’s grown so lame in his old age that it seems he’s stuck here…” she paused, breathed deeply, seeming a little preoccupied. “Well, we’d better go and get that room sorted.”
She led him up the stairs, which were covered in a carpet bearing pretty floral designs that covered most of the splintered unvarnished dark wood. As he climbed the steps he often felt a loose board and always a hollow echo as if entering a cave rather than rising from the piano nobile to the boudoir. When he reached the top he was confronted by a sideboard which bore not the mariolatric imagery he might have expected in a rural Irish homestead, but what a more worldly young man might have recognised as statues of the Hindu god Ganesh, a corpulent, sedate Buddha, and a contemplative, emaciated Sadhu. Unaware of their religious, cultural or spiritual significance, he was nonetheless fascinated by the artistry and the work that may have gone into them. He was looking at the eyes above Ganesh’s trunk when he heard Siobhan ask: “didn’t you have some sort of bag with you?” he panicked wildly, wondered if this question might be a loaded one, then regained his composure long enough to realise that he might give himself away if he revealed how much the contents of the bag must remain a secret to her. “Yes,” he gulped, “I had better go down and get it. “Alright”, she said, “I’ll go in and make a start on the room.” He was just starting to make his way down the stairs when he heard his name being called gently, almost transparently, by Siobhan. He turned round to face he, saw her lips open gently, her hands reach out towards his neck. She caressed his neck gently, then reached up and placed her lips on his. Rapidly, she ran her tongue around every part of his mouth, removed it again and pecked him several times on the lips. She then removed her hands from his neck and waved gently, a wave that suggested promise of further consummation to come. Schillerz would have been excited by this prospect if it wasn’t for the worry about his bag that wormed away at the back of his head. He went downstairs, stuck his head in the door of the living room, saw that Tom was still reading, and then saw where he had left his bag in the corridor. As quietly as he could, he opened it and checked to see if everything was in order. When he was satisfied that it was, he went back up the stairs, his mind left clear to enjoy whatever pleasures may await him there.
He climbed back up the stairs, shivering slightly with anticipation, beads of sweat starting to glisten on his forehead. When he got to the room the door was still open. Siobhan was inside, spreading out the blankets on the bed, her breasts bouncing around inside her blouse and her hair tossing gently as she did it. When she caught sight of Schillerz, she glanced briefly, flirtatiously in his direction. She leaned over to smooth the blanket into position, wiggling her hips gently and casting another titillating glance at him as she did so. Then she pulled herself up onto the bed and beckoned Schillerz with the little finger of her left hand. She did this for a couple of seconds, then her look of lust turned to one of disappointment when it seemed that, instead of responding to her overtures, he was just standing there, sweating, twitching, with a look of fear and foreboding on his face. Ah yes, readers, it seems the ghosts of hymen, young Goodman Brown and countless other literary and historical figures are alive in this protagonist. Siobhan, though, has been brought up by the nuns in school, not so much by her father, who, as you may have guessed is of a more liberal bent, to believe that men are after only one thing, and here she is offering that one thing to a man on a plate and he just stands there twitching. What gives?
“Is there somthin’ the matter?” she asks, “You look a little nervous.”
“Well, I have to admit I am, a little.” Nervous? What an admission for a son of the Reich to make. It seems our Teutonic hero is less a heroic warrior like Siegfreid and more of a effete romantic like Young Werther. But let’s not be too judgemental. Let’s follow him through the nervous ecstasy that is the first tentative voyage into the pleasures of the flesh.
“Sure why should yeh be? Weren’t we together like this outside, where anyone could have come along and seen us?”
His answer came hesitantly. “Well, yes, but… that was all very sudden. This I was expecting, and the expectation makes me nervous.”
“But sure what is there to be nervous about? Isn’t what we’re doing the most natural thing in the world?” Way to confound traditional gender relation patterns, Siobhan. Is she an erstwhile spice girl, or an avatar of her matriarchal ancestors? Either way she’s a girl out of time, and for a man from the land of German physics this can only cause his mind to heave as when the sky and sea contend which is mightier..
“I suppose, well, yes it is but….” He doesn’t know what to say next. And here’s the irony. He’s from Germany, the land that gave us the yearning love poetry of Goethe, and the sensuous chords of Wagner and Beethoven, but where sexual intercourse is seen right now as a means to create more soldiers for the wehrmact. She’s from Ireland, the island that gave the world shelia-na-gigs but where fornication is never even mentioned. So who’s the conformist and who’s the nonconformist? Who’s more in touch with their roots? Answers on a postcard please. It hardly seems to matter, from a suspense viewpoint. After all, this isn’t a serialised 19th century novel by Dickens, although you never know, I’ve there’s some lucrative opportunities out there on the internet for this sort of thing. Speaking of which, what if Siobhan was still alive in the age of the internet? She’s a very attractive young thing, and clearly extremely at ease with her sexuality…. No, hang on, I’m jumping the gun a bit, as she may still be alive when the internet comes along, and there will be a market for so-called “Centenary Sex” then….
But back to the story. Schillerz has been scratching his stubble, which he still hasn’t gotten round to shaving, and contemplates her words. It is natural, he supposes, in the convoluted, indecisive way with which you might now be familiar. He moves over tentatively to the side of the bed and sits down. He leans over towards Siobhan and starts to run his fingers through her hair. She lets him do this for a couple of seconds, then grabs his neck and presses his lips against hers. She feels the gristle of his stubble, recoils slightly, then sticks her tongue out and places it deep into his mouth. She throws he arms around his neck and rolls over until she is on top of him. She looks at his face, briefly. The nervousness is still there, but gradually giving way to ecstasy. She feels a surge of pride, as if she is a voluptuous Celtic Virgil drawing this Teutonic Dante into a netherworld of carnal passion. She is unsure if he can sense this, but it is unimportant to her. She is not doing what she is doing for her ego, but for the sheer heck of it. If she was Chaucer’s wife of Bath, she’d want a spouse who was fair by night but foul by day, though as far as she can tell, this young man is fair all of the time, even now, unshaven, dishevelled, unfed. If anything, these attributes lend him a feral quality that make him even more appealing. When he looks up at her, he wonders would she be doing this if she knew who he was. But then would any us ever do it with anybody if they really knew their deepest, darkest fantasies? That’s one I’ll leave to the psychologists.
In the meantime she leans over him, starts to unbutton his shirt, feels the beads of sweat on his neck. She starts to kiss his chest, first pecking gently, then licking glutinously while occasionally raising her eyes towards his face. She sees that his eyes are closed, he is breathing in deeply through his nose, his lips are curled into a smile, but one in which she can still sense some unease. She is undeterred. She opens a few more buttons, rubs her fingers through his nascent chest hair, caresses his firm, lithe stomach, kisses him some more. Then she curls her arms round his back, and pulls him on top of herself. He seems unsure of how to react to this, so she unbuttons her own blouse, revealing a Himalayan cleavage which causes a brief protuberance of Schillerz’ Adam’s Apple, which in turn causes a look of gratification on the face of Siobhan. It’s a look a more sexually experienced young man would recognise as the look of someone who’s elicited this reaction enough times to recognise it but not enough times to take it for granted. As Schillerz has clearly conferred the role of initiator on her, she decides to grab him by the back of the neck and presses his face against her chest. This time he takes his cue, kisses her firm breasts, places his face deep into her cleavage and shakes his head around, hears her giggle slightly, but is unsure whether she is ticklish or ecstatic. Then he pulls back her bra and starts to touch her one of her nipples the way a small child plays with a toy it doesn’t quite understand the use of. He licks its soft, moist surface and listens to her moan gently, a sign to him that he is doing what he is doing right and gives him the confidence to be more adventurous. He unbuttons the rest of his shirt, then presses his chest against her bosoms, eliciting louder groans. He presses his chest against her and licks her neck as she gently slips out of her dress and starts to undo her bra, sensibly, as bra-opening was probably not part of Schillerz’ abwehr training. When all this engineering is complete Schillerz lifts himself off her and surveys the results, like a mountaineer who has reached the peak or a feudal lord surveying his chattels, perhaps even like God admiring the universe on the 6th day. And could eve have been more beautiful than this creature that lay before him? Would he have not given far more than his rib just for the briefest glance at her bountiful breasts with their erect nipples, her narrow waist and her round hips? Would he not have forsaken prelapsarian bliss for the scent, let alone the taste of her forbidden fruit? No, surely even the serpent would be overwhelmed by her beauty, so intimidated by it that he would be afraid to approach her, content to slither up a tree and admire her voluptuous form from a distance. Schillerz instead looks at her with a trace of Teutonic weltschmertz, a consciousness that all this beauty that lies before him will wither and die. Perhaps too, a soldiers instinct, drilled into him in years of training, that this moment could, theoretically be his last.
Is her lust motivated by a similar fear? Is she afraid that the war might reach into her land of bucolic bliss? He imagines not. It is surely a life-affirming, convention-defying, enjoyment of the pleasures of the flesh that leads her to stroke his chest, first with her large yet tender milkmaids fingers, then with her long, hard, erect nipples which she first rubs and then presses hard against his chest. Then she runs them down his torso to his stomach, shaking them slightly as she does so, smiling gently at his reaction. She turns around, looks back so that she avoids kicking him in the face as she places her legs over his chest. Then she shuffles back until her underwear is in Schillerz’ face. She looks over her shoulder to check his reaction, which is a mixture of pleasant surprise and red-faced embarrassment. Then she wiggles her buttocks, and then presses them into his face. She wraps her thighs around his head, and starts to unbutton his fly. She is surprised by the style of his underwear, more silky and transparent than anything she has ever seen on a male before, and pauses for a second, but deems it inappropriate to make any comment. Then she caresses his groin with almost surgical precision and reaches down to find his member, which is as rigid as some of his philosophical views have heretofore been, and as long as the time he’s waited for this moment. She strokes it gently, looking back to watch Schillerz head turn back, his eyelids shut and his lips gently expire the slightest of moans. Then she starts to lick, and the moans become louder. She holds it, places her lips at its head, then starts to suck, and hears his breathing become more intense. Then she pulls her underwear down and presses her vulva into his face.
This opens up a whole cornucopia of sensations for Schillerz, who would have preferred to be doing this in a more settled frame of mind, but who does not want to miss this opportunity, nor seem weak in the eyes of a woman. Now he knows with some degree of certainty that he is likely to lose his virginity. Only his own lack of protection can prevent his hard, throbbing member from penetrating the mass of tender pink flesh and wiry black pubic hair that is currently assaulting his senses. It’s hard to describe the combination of shock and titillation that run through Schillerz head right now, for this is a man who grew up in a country where pornography is extremely inaccessible and where sex education is limited. Will any of you ever be able to relate to him? Will any of you feel this horror when you find out that this flaccid, malodorous lump of flesh is the focus of all the cravings, all the desires you have had since your adolescence? Can any of you share his shock? Or would you love to have your virginity grabbed from you like this, not so much lost as stolen in a sudden smash and grab robbery?
Of course Schillerz is too incoherent to think about any of this in any sort of coherent way. His mind has briefly left the world of cognition and entered the world of sensations. He is not thinking any more but feeling. He feels his body temperature warm, his heart and pulse race, feels the blood rush to his penis and feels his testicles tighten. He feels the warm, moist inside of Siobhan’s mouth around the tip of his penis, feels her breasts against his stomach, her fingers clench his buttocks, her hair streaming over his thighs. But most of all he feels her vagina. He leans his head back a bit, to try and get a better perspective of this strange organ that surrounds his face like a tropical jungle. He feels, even more than at any time in the past few days, connected to the earth. It’s as if, rather than exploring a new, undiscovered terrain, he’s making a Sophoclean homeward journey. Is this true in more senses than one? Has he not only been between the sweaty thighs of a young woman before, in a time he cannot remember, except maybe under the guidance of a particularly talented psychiatrist, but has he been here before, in a geographical sense? Has a fresh wind from the east borne him over the clouds to his Heimat? Right now, he couldn’t give a fuck. He has entered the world of the physical so comprehensively, it’s as if the rest of his brain has stopped whatever it was doing and watched what was happening in his thalamus. It’s as if, fifty years later, he was flicking through channels on cable TV and there was porn on every channel. He has lost, for perhaps the first time in his life, the need to make sense of everything. It’s a pivotal moment in his life, for more than one reason. If only Siobhan knew what a Jacobin bouleversement she was initiating, just by sucking his cock and pressing her vulva into his face. In a tragic piece of irony, the only person who could appreciate the irony of this piece of concupiscence, the man who could read this passage without having to look up any of the words, is downstairs, reading a book. But he’s been here too, knows the joys of the flesh as much as any Sade or Casanova, knows the thrill of seeing that glint in a woman’s eye that means she wants to sleep with you, he knows the ecstasy of feeling breasts pressed against his chest, the moment of bliss when his body enters the soft, wet, tender place between a woman’s legs, like his father did, and his father before him. But for Schillerz, this could be a maiden voyage to a new land, he could be inventing sexual intercourse 23 years before the Beatles. If he didn’t, then where would the joy be?
Siobhan takes her mouth away from his penis, though he has not yet ejaculated. It is still hard, as she caresses it again while she turns around and places her head next to him. Without any words passing, she senses his nervousness in his deep breathing, tries to calm him by rubbing his hair and his stubble.
“You seem a little bit pale. Am I going a bit too fast for you? Am I being a bit forward?” He isn’t sure if he can answer this without admitting he’s a virgin.
He takes a deep breath and answers, “No, this is really good. I am really enjoying this. And You?”
She doesn’t answer, she just gives him a coy smile and takes his hand, and puts it on her vulva. She guides his index finger inside till it reaches the spot, then gives him a look. He seems puzzled in response, so she pulls his finger in and out, until, as if she was teaching a child to walk, she is confident he is mastering this most subtle of arts himself. He knows he has got the hang of it when he starts to hear her moan gently. She does this for a while, reaching a climax, then pulling his hand out again gently. She paused a little and asked, “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” She laughs for a moment, then suppresses her cachinnation by placing her hand in front of her mouth. She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes briefly. She takes her hand away from her mouth, wipes the saliva on the sheet. She move her lips close to his ears and whispers, “Are you ready to Fuck Me, Patrick?”
She feels him shudder before she hears any response, as if a physical response happened before a cerebral one. His verbal response, when it comes, is staccato. “I…. Well, yes, I, have you, um, can you… are you?”
She takes another deep breath. “Okay. I don’t have any protection, it’s not easy to get any in this part of the world. I’m not carrying any VDs , and I’m on a part of my cycle where the chances of getting pregnant are minimal.” Schillerz roughly understood the first two clauses in this statement, but the last left him a bit puzzled. “What do you mean be cycle?”, he asked, trying to clarify.
Yet another deep breath, and a considered response. “This is something my father explained to me. Our bodies move in cycles, they flush themselves out every month or so…” She watches him grimace slightly “Anyway, we can calculate when we are fertile by counting the days when we can, y’know…” she places one of her hands on her groin and gently opens her vagina. With the other she grabs his penis and pulls it in the direction of her other hand, the rest of his body sprawling awkwardly in pursuit like an inebriate who stepped on some spilt drink. When he regains equilibrium, she leads his penis inside her. Then he goes through the full gamut of sensations, ecstasy, pain, pride, relief, joy, as he passes in and out of this mass of voluptuity and hears the moans of joy ring in his ears like the sound of pigeons cooing in a distant field on the horizon.
Was I a bit too explicit in this description? Do I know the meaning of the words “sublimation” and “subtext”? Should I have tried my hand at a bit of Flaubertian innuendo? Let’s watch Siobhan’s reaction and find out.
“Well, that was nothing to be nervous about, now was it?”, she said, gently caressing his chest, giggling almost imperceptibly. “You enjoyed that, didn’t you? I certainly did.” He responds with a mixture of fatigue and joy. “Yes”, he says, inhaling deeply, “Yes, I did, yes. Thank you so much, I…” he could think of nothing further to say, merely kissed her gently on the lips and lay down. She looked at him with a slight tinge of guilt and said, “God, yer looking fierce tired. I’m not sure we should have done this now.”
Schillerz was emphatic in his response, at least as emphatic as it was possible to be in his current state. “ No, I am so glad we did this, thank you so much.” She giggled again, kissed him on the lips, and said, “You’re such a lovely fella, Patrick. I’d better go down and get you some grub.” He panicked briefly before figuring out that this meant dinner, then relaxed and watched her blow him a kiss as she walked out the door.
He had much to ponder, when the glow the lit up his face faded and the rictus curling his lips turned to a fatigued look of contentment. Would it be prudent to radio home now? What would he say? How would he explain his whereabouts for the last few days? One question that underlay all these thoughts but which he was prevented from thinking consciously by some internal censorship mechanism was Did he really want to go back to the abwehr? That, surely, would be thinking the unthinkable. On the other hand, how could he possibly stay here, in this place where he had been induced into a world of pleasures he had never known before but where his origins would surely become apparent. He considered all the possible contingencies. The most hopeful one was that he could stay here in secret until the war resulted in a German victory, and with the knowledge he would acquire of the country, could gain some high-ranking job in the administration after the war. Another was that he would be found out, spend the rest of the war in a POW camp, and hopefully be regarded as a hero when the war was over. He did not want to consider what would happen if the war was lost for National Socialism in this eventuality. But then, a fourth possibly crept stealthily into his mind. What if he stayed, and the allies won the war? He tossed and turned in the bed, as if this thought was a rash causing him itches all over his body. Had he become so disloyal to everything he had been brought up to believe in such a short space of time? No, he reasoned, the events of the last few days had merely shaken his reasoning powers, but not to the extent that one good nights sleep could not alleviate. When he rose the next morning he would finally radio home and await instructions, hopefully being able to fabricate some plausible explanation for his predicament. Even if he was ordered to move away from here, this might not be the last time he encountered Siobhan, and even it was, there would be other women, even if they did not share her bountiful bosoms, or her flowing tresses, or her energy, vitality, her lust for life…. Maybe he would wait two or three days, claim he had tried to get in contact before bur there were adverse weather conditions, he could verify this by getting weather reports on the radio. Radio. Yes, the radio, he thought, as his eyes closed and he inhaled a deep yawn, and felt a combination of bliss and fatigue draw his head deeper into the pillow.


He’s in a battlefield, from the last war. He’s soaked in mud, hears the machine-gun bullets ricochet over his head. He drinks some rationed tea, cold, weak, coagulated. Then there’s an order to go over the top, given by a Prussian colonel with a walrus moustache. He and his comrades leap out of the trench, over the barbed wire. He doesn’t see the looks on any of their faces, but he senses the fear. They run through the mud, feel the rain pelting on their faces, watching the enemy move towards them and reaching for his gun. Then he realises he has no gun. He looks around, notices nobody else has a gun either. But they all keep running, and there is too much noise, too much notion to ask why. When they reach the opposing army, they wear trench coats and gas masks, but also carry no guns. They draw up close, he hears the inhaling through a gas mask like some strange alien creature. One of them steps forward. This person makes a motion towards their head, pulls the hood from the trench coat and unstraps the back of the gasmask. In a flash, he sees a lock of blond hair trickle out, then, suddenly the mask is off and blond locks are blowing in the wind as the soldiers face is revealed as that of Siobhan. The other soldiers follow, and all turn out to be women. Then the rain stops, the wind dies down. Siobhan approaches him, starts to undress him, then herself. They fall down in the mud and roll around making love. He looks up, sees that everyone is doing the same. Then the heat starts to make steam rise from the trenches, but, rather than a foul stench he smells a gently aromatic odour. He places his finger in the mud, then into his mouth. It’s a taste he is unfamiliar with, subtle, beguiling. He places more mud in his mouth, other people notice him and do the same. They lick the mud from each other’s bodies in a frenzy of culinary ecstasy. Then he places his head in the mud, and the rest of his body is drawn in. he swims around, his senses saturated with sweet, soft mud. Then he hears a voice calling him, but he is not being called Hermann but Patrick. He swims back up through the mud, and with a shudder, reaches the top.

He sees the face of Siobhan, not on a muddy battlefield, but looking down at him on a sweaty pillow.
“Bejasus, Patrick, that must’ve been some strange dream yeh were havin’.”
“Oh, yes,” he offered, gradually regaining some sense of where he was. Then he breathed in and said, “Mmm, something smells good. Is dinner ready?”
“Sure, course ‘tis. I wouldn’t have woken you up otherwise, now would I?”
This argument seemed compelling to Schillerz, who made the titanic effort required to drag himself out of bed. When he was up and had rubbed the dust out of his eyes, she held him by the hand and started to walk down the stairs.
“Are you sure you want us to be seen like this?”, he asked.
The only answer she gave was a huge kiss that made him feel like she was trying to suck all the oxygen from his body. It struck him as strange, given the impression he had of the Irish as being moralistic Catholics, that she would respond this way, and it failed to quell his nerves about the prospect of meeting her father. She could sense this by the look on his face, so she pressed her palms against his cheeks, looked straight into his eyes and said, “Look, me da’s not like other fathers. He’s tolerant and understanding… he lets me be who I am… you don’t have to worry.”
Schillerz was still not fully convinced, but the dilation of he blue eyes made him acquiesce. He followed her down the stairs, the tips of his fingers touching those of her outstretched hand, he watched every swivel of her taut round hips, reflecting briefly how astonishing it was that his lust for her was not yet satiated. As they got closer to the dining room, the odours from the meal became more pervasive, with a combination of strength and piquancy that almost brought a tear to his eye, and a curiosity to his brain that helped to fill the awkward gap in conversation.
“So, what is this dinner we are having that smells so good?”
“I put together some Biryani. Have you ever had that before?”
He racked his brains trying to register that word as they reached the bottom stair and turned to reach the dreaded door where he would have to confront her father. No, he couldn’t say he’d ever eaten a biryani before, so he didn’t. he just gritted his teeth together and tried to release his hand from her grasp, only to find her grasp tightening and a scowl forming on her face that he had neither seen before nor expected. Of course there were sides of him that she had not seen either, to put it mildly, but it still surprised him to see her tender blue eyes fixate into a glare and her sweet, moist lips curl into a frown. It would have made him reflect on his own duplicity if he was not in such a state of shivering panic.
They got through the door, and were faced by her father, who looked up from his meal, having dispensed with the formalities typical to this situation, shifted the food around his mouth enough to facilitate speech, and waved his hand in the air, and said, “Come, Patrick, sit down.” Two plates were laid out opposite him, and when they sat down it was almost as if they were in the position that a marriage registrar and a marrying couple would be in, though this thought never occurred to Schillerz.
“I hope you like biryani”, he added. “I wasn’t sure if you liked hot food so I went easy on the spices.”
Schillerz took a look at the meal which lay before him and confessed: “I’m not sure I’ve ever had anything like this”
“Ah, so you prefer more traditional fare, like a bit of lamb stew”
This failed to produce any form of response, so he offered, somewhat disappointedly, “More a meat and two veg man, then? Ah well, I s’pose we can introduce you to something different here.
“Well”, said Schillerz, taking his cue, “It certainly smells good from outside”, and took a tentative first bite, watched eagerly by both Siobhan and her father. He tossed the food around in his mouth briefly, shook his head around the way people do in these situations, and then said: “Mmm, this is good. What do you put into it?”
Tom scratched his beard briefly, and said, “let me see… there’s the rice, the lentils, then the veg: peas, carrots, onions, tomatoes, then the spices, star anise, aniseed, ginger garlic…” He paused, then Siobhan, who was admiring the elegant way that Schillerz was eating his meal added, “Coriander, chilli, cardamoms” and watched as her father nodded assent. Schillerz wondered how they could eat such rich food but also noticed the lack of meat, and perhaps more surprisingly, potatoes. He wondered how he could inquire about these absentees tactfully. He could put the absence of meat down to shortages as a result of the war, but the potatoes?
“So, yer not a man for the ol’ spuds, then, Mr. O’ Grady”, he said, not without a certain pride in his rapid mastery of the idioms of Hiberno-English.
“Oh, no, Patrick. Don’t you know that all plants that grow under the soil lead to passionate lust. We don’t want any of that in this house, me boy.”
There was a moment of almost complete silence when Schillerz’ food stuck in his throat, he glanced at Tom’s face in sheer horror, but then noticed him glance over at Siobhan, who seemed to be biting her lower lip, then closed her eyes, tossed her head back and burst into laughter. There was a moment of confusion for Schillerz, then one of relief in which a hangover of panic-induced chest pain persisted, and then another of confusion, where he silently beckoned explanation with the look of perplexity on his face.
“I’m sorry”, said Tom, as his glance drifted from his quietly giddy daughter to his Teutonic guest, “But my daughter and I have a slight cruel streak. I’m sorry if we made you choke on your food.” He looked at his silent guest, who was still apoplectic with fear, and asked, “You didn’t choke too badly, did you, you’re okay?”
It took Schillerz a second or two to recover some measure of equanimity, a difficult task as he was still uncertain of whether the strange, enigmatic man across the table from him was aware of what had passed between his daughter and his guest in the past hour. “Yes, I’m okay. But I was unaware that anyone in Ireland had that attitude to potatoes before.
Tom scratched his beard and breathed in deeply in a way that elicited a slightly frustrated look from Siobhan that Schillerz caught out of the corner of his eye. Schillerz would learn in time that it was this set of gestures that preceded one of Tom’s lengthy exegeses on topics garnered from his time spent reading in the living room.
“Well, y’know, Patrick, historiography of the potato in this country concentrates, somewhat understandably, on the famine epoch, but…” he glanced briefly at Siobhan, whose head had turned down towards her meal, then continued with a element of resignation creeping into his voice, “but they have a long and fascinating history. Y’know, when they first came to Europe, people refused to eat them, just because of that superstition I mentioned. Then, later, it was considered that they made people indolent because they were so easy to grow. Ironically, because at the same time no end of devices which put humans out of work were being patented at The time. Then there was a theory, postulated mainly by the British…” he sighed slightly, suggestively to Schillerz, that potatoes weakened people, spiritually as well as physically. Which was… bollocks, if you’ll excuse my language, as all the scientific studies prove the opposite, at least in the case of the latter.”
Schillerz was getting used to long spiels like that and was about to offer a response when Tom added:
“Of course, I’ve got my own pet theory, and Siobhan will forgive me if she’s heard it before…” Schillerz glanced over at Siobhan, who looked up, briefly, sardonically, that potato consumption leads to socially conservative views.” At this, Schillerz’ eyebrows raised, prompting no reaction from tom other than to scratch his beard gently. “Yes, I’m growing increasingly attracted to the theory that, in this country, we started to become reactionary when we started eating spuds. I think they provide such a staple form of nutrition, that they make people more inclined to become set in there ways. Of course, there’s also a theory that if you grow spuds you can boil them yourselves, whereas wheat has to be grown, milled, baked and distributed, leading to more dissemination of ideas, which sadly, our island has been lacking in lately... Not just here, though. In France, the reaction to the Jacobin revolution set in when potato-growing became widespread, and similarly with Britain in the Victorian era, though of course,” he added with measurable disdain, meat consumption also increased rapidly in that era.” “I also hear rumours that the Germans” he pronounced this word with a slight detachment, a vague weltschmertz, “are eating a lot more spuds now, not that, of course, that’s the main factor in developments over there but, y’know…”
He paused and gave Schillerz a look that he could not quite comprehend. Was he suspicious of something, his nationality, his origins, his relationship with his daughter? If he was, there was no point in doing anything to fuel these suspicions. He could not demonstrate his anger at the implication that his compatriots who were trying to bring civilization to the world were in any way `socially conservative’. It would be better to cozen his interlocutor, appeal to his obvious predilection for meretricious displays of erudition.
“I never expected such a comprehensive answer”, he said. This brought a smile to Tom’s face, which in turn relieved Schillerz, but Siobhan only sneered under her breath.
“Well”, said Tom, sounding slightly pleased with himself, “I’ve devoted a lot of study to this area. Y’know, what we eat to a large extent defines what we are. “Hindus and Buddhists…” he made a gesture in the direction of the dancing natraja to their left, “don’t eat meat which affirms the respect they feel towards other animals. Here, everyone eats milk, potatoes and whatever bit of meat they can get their hands on, and we’ve lost much of the creativity that once made this island the land of saints and scholars. You’ve noticed, I presume, that Siobhan and I try to escape this oppressive culinary regime as much as possible.”
Now Schillerz was starting to get some sort of grasp on tom’s weltanschauung, and his curiosity had been prickled. “Yes, I can see that living in a place like this must be difficult for a person like you. What makes you stay here? Wouldn’t you be happier in the city, where there would be more people of your views?”
“Precious few, I’m afraid, even in Dublin. Besides, I’m someone who has to live rurally. All the great thinkers did; Socrates, Buddha…” he paused for a second. “Not that I consider my self a great thinker, though I’d be doing myself an injustice if I didn’t admit I was a prolific thinker.” Schillerz didn’t know what this word meant, but nodded assent all the same. “Besides, my ancestors have lived in this part of the world for as far back as records exist. And it’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, after all, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Schillerz forgot briefly the persona he had adopted, then hastily, perhaps a little too hastily, blurted out an affirmation, recovering slightly with, “I almost feel at home here already.”
Tom laughed and said, giving a knowing glance to Siobhan, “well, I’m glad we make you feel that way.” Then he paused and added “So, Patrick, how is my daughter in bed?”
Once again he choked on his food. When he recovered from the initial shock he could only wonder why they were taunting him like this, and how a father could treat his daughter’s sexuality in such a cavalier way. This caused him no end of cognitive dissonance. Were they aware of who he was, where he came from, and exploiting him? Was she a succubus from some malign force in the Universe that was opposed to the inevitable victory of National Socialism, and he her evil, brilliant accomplice. How else could he explain the persecution they were putting him through?
“I’m not entirely sure what you’re referring to?” was his taciturn response.
“Oh, please, Patrick, there’s no need to be coy with us. We’re not like other people. We don’t eat that many potatoes. We have statues of Hindu deities all round the house. We’re tolerant people, Patrick. We don’t believe in suppressing what’s natural. I know my daughter is very attractive. I know she doesn’t get to meet that many men, living here, taking care of me. I know you’re a handsome man, and I know that look in her eyes when she’s got some action.”
Siobhan responded only with a mild blush, but Schillerz was taken aback by this mixture of flattery and candour. He was still unsure whether this remark was honest or merely luring him into a trap, but a look at Siobhan’s sweet, innocent face seemed to confirm the former.
“I’m not sure what to say to that.”
“Just tell the truth. That always works out best in the end.”
Apprehensively, he decided to follow the older man’s advice. His reluctance was etched all over his face like an Indian rock-cut temple. He looked around, briefly, at the man scratching his beard across from him and the luscious creature whose carnal tryst with him he was now being asked to describe. He made the sort of gulp that he had seen some of the abwehr officers make after drinking a whole glass of lager in one swallow, except that instead of wiping the froth from his lips, he was wiping the sweat from his brow.
He looked up with a meek look that brought to tom’s mind a Velazqeuz Christ or Rembrandt’s Jacob. It wasn’t contrived that way by Schillerz, who lack the guile to act with such duplicity, and if he had, would have known better than to try to cozen such a wise man in such a way.
“Your daughter is a wonderful, beautiful, girl and I had an amazing time with her.” He paused and waited with torturous anticipation for their reaction. In this time the old Dutch clock on the mantelpiece may only have ticked twice but the intervals could have been those between it’s hourly chimes. Yet at the end there the relief as he learned that he had not walked into a trap but into a forum where he could discuss a part of himself honestly for the first time since he had come to this strange country. Years later he would debate whether he first noticed Tom’s benevolent smile or felt Siobhan’s embrace from his left, such was the tension in the moment that followed. So pivotal, so epiphanic a moment this was in his life that it would form the basis for more dreams than any other event in his life, even after all he’d been through. The rest he remembered with more clarity.
“I suppose you should stay here for a few more days and get to know us a little bit better, then.” Tom’s words, as if by some process of molecular displacement, seemed to drag Siobhan across the table and throw her arms around her father. Though he had never treated her with anything other than total respect, she never lost sight of the fact that she was extremely lucky in that respect. He, in turn, seemed only slightly embarrassed by the kisses she planted on his cheek. When she settled down again, Schillerz said he would be happy to stay for a while. He knew he did not have anything to lose by saying this, except perhaps the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and whose cheek was now pressed against his, with her long tresses running down over his shoulder. Yet, though he was convinced of the remarkable tolerance of this family, he was unsure they would tolerate his fascism, particularly in view of what Siobhan had said the first time they met. So now it was no longer a tactical choice about whether to radio home or not, but a fundamental choice about what sort of person he wanted to be. He was certain Siobhan did not know the depths of his quandary, but Tom was more ambiguous. Every time he was asked about where he came from or where he was going, he detected a sly, covert scepticism that kept him on the cautious side. Was he going to ask him about where he came from again over this dinner table? No, surely that would be a bridge to far. That would be the moment in which the cholesterol from every bratwurst he had ever eaten would congeal around his arteries and leave him choking on the floor. To his enormous relief, for the rest of this dinner he was allowed indulge himself in the little white lie that he came from Dublin. It was one that, even internally, he was becoming more comfortable with. Was he going native, was his personality shifting fundamentally, or was he just adjusting to changing circumstances? He had neither the distance nor the intellect to decide. He would have to play the next few days by ear, but he was not unconscious of the fact that the longer he left it to radio home, the more flamboyant his excuse would have to be. And perhaps the rugged individualism of this family was starting to affect him? He preferred not to think about it. He just ate his biryani and chatted with his new-found friends. After the initial shocks, they were giving him a pretty easy ride, though he continued to notice the scepticism often creep onto tom’s face when he asked something about Dublin and received a vague answer. Right now, though, he felt so at ease with the world that this did not bother him so much.
When they had finished dinner, Schillerz graciously offered to help with the washing up but his offer was dismissed by a wave of tom’s hand. “No, no, sit down there and we’ll bring you a cup of tea. Would you prefer Darjeeling, Earl Grey, or green?”
He had heard of the first two but he did not know what the third was, thought maybe it was some Irish thing, and thought he would give it a try. When he got it was a pungent, bitter beverage like he had never tasted before, and the term “green” clearly wasn’t metaphorical. Nevertheless, he drank it politely. As Tom finished drying what Siobhan had washed, he asked Schillerz if he had anything to read. He thought of the instruction manual in his bag, and then thought it should under no circumstances be mentioned. He told Tom he had forgotten to bring any books with him, and, as he anticipated, was invited into the living room to borrow one. He knew his English would not be quite good enough to fully understand any of them, though his standard-issue dictionary would prove helpful. When he entered the living room again he gazed once more at the books that lined its walls in wonder.
“It must’ve taken you a long time to read these books”, he suggested, in a somewhat pedestrian way.
“Well”, said Tom modestly, these last few years I haven’t been able to get out much with the pains I’ve been having.”
Schillerz knew this was an idle piece of modesty, but wanted to know what these pains were anyhow.
“Oh, these last eight years I’ve gotten these pains all over my body. I can’t really explain them, I’ve talked to doctors about it, read up on the subject…” he pointed to a series of thick-bound medical books on one of the higher shelves, “but I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps in fifty years time people will have a name for my condition, but right now it’s a mystery.”
Schillerz, not for the first time was puzzled. “You seem Okay to me, you can walk around without any difficulty.”
“Yes, but the pains can strike me any time. I’ll get a pain in my leg and not be able to walk. For that reason I can never walk for more than a few yards from the house.” He paused, and added melancholically, “I miss the scenery around here a lot. I have a friend who has a car and we go for the odd jaunt, but there’s nothing like the freedom of walking trough the meadows on a spring evening. Sadly, that’s all gone and I’ve been forced to retreat into this Platonic cave of thought.”
He gave a glance at Schillerz, realized he did not recognize the allusion, but got the general gist, and thought he should offer him something relatively easy to read. Schillerz, for his part, was more concerned with the significance of the “eight years”. Why was he so specific with this figure? Was it a reference to the formation of the Reich at the same time? Was it a veiled signal that he was on to him? No, surely not, he thought, he was just being paranoid, as Tom reached up to take a book off a shelf and blew the dust off it, opened it’s thick, browning pages and read the inscription on the inside, which seemed to act as a Proustian madelaine for Tom, who briefly drifted into a reverie.
He snapped out of it much as he would have from an afternoon nap, taking a second to realize where he was. “This was given to me by a person who had a major influence on my life, someone who taught me at school. I used to keep in regular contact with him until he died a few years ago.” Schillerz, perceiving the merest glint of a tear coming to Tom’s eye said “I’m sorry” in the most sympathetic tone he could muster but could not think of anything to add that would not compound Tom’s melancholy, so instead jerked his head in the direction of the book, and asked, “what’s it about?”
Tom paused, then presented the book reverentially to Schillerz, as if he was passing down the secrets of an ancient civilization. “Read it yourself”, he said, as the book changed hands, “and then tell me what you think yourself.” Schillerz opened it, looked at the inscription, but found the handwriting illegible, then the title, Candide, and the authors name, which rung a bell for some reason, though he could not remember precisely why.
“Do you want to sit down in the living room and have a read of this, or do you want to go upstairs for a rest?”, tom asked.
Schillerz briefly debated with himself whether it would be polite or not to go up for a rest, and then decided it would. Tom patted him on the back and said “Okay. The room is made up alright, isn’t it?” Schillerz was unable suppress a slight grin, which, as if by a process of osmosis, led Tom’s expression to become more grave. “Listen, Patrick, I meant what I said about being Okay with your relationship with my daughter. But I also love her dearly, and I’d like you to promise me you’ll never do anything to hurt her.” Feeling slightly chastened, Schillerz reached out to grasp Tom’s outstretched hand, felt his tight, firm grasp, and said, “I promise.” Still holding his hand, Tom looked directly into his eyes, and said, “I trust you, Patrick. I know that, whatever you may believe, you’re basically a decent person.” This sent such a shudder through Schillerz’ body that he wondered if tom could feel the trembling in his hand. More than ever, he felt that Tom knew of his origins, yet if he had, why did he not bring this knowledge into the open now, at a point where Schillerz was relatively calm and able do deal with it? He had dealt with things honestly that most people would have kept a secret even from themselves. Perhaps he wanted more certainty before he made any accusations. If this was the case, then his dilemma was becoming more and more acute. He would have to weigh up the evidence, try to make sense of this strange, enigmatic man. Maybe the book which he had given him so pointedly would offer some clues. Or maybe it would add to his confusion. Either way he was eager to read it, though first he would take up that offer of a rest.
He walked up the stairs, his head spinning once again. Did everyone go through a phase like this in their life, where their lives were thrown into flux and they were confronted with such a monumental choice? Did this happen to his parents? Did it happen to the fuehrer? Ah yes, remember him? Schillerz hadn’t thought about him in a while, but he was there, somewhere in the back of Schillerz’ consciousness, making loud, gesticulative speeches that once would have held him rapt but now echoed like distant church bells.
He pushed the door of the bedroom where he was sleeping open, heard the by now familiar creaking. He lay down on the bed, the bed where just a few hours before he had been initiated into the world of the pleasures of the flesh. He casually opened the book that Tom had given him, glanced cursorily at the opening page. He did not read the first line, but scanned the page like a primate taking a mental snapshot of the African savannah. The words “baron” and “Westphalia” leapt out at him like a leopard jumping from one of the trees in the distance. It seemed yet another indication that Tom knew of his origins. It didn’t seem to be a German book, though, the name of the author seemed French, it was highly unlikely that he was Vichy, as the book was evidently quite old. It was impossible that he was one of the great German authors of the past, or he would surely have heard his name many times before in the roster of Teutonic cultural heroes. Maybe Tom had some of their works downstairs, the Goethes and Heines and al those other names that recalled memories of cold dusty schoolrooms and haughty teachers with moustaches and double-breasted suits but whom he had never got round to reading. This would all come later, after he had read this book and had his first impressions confirmed or denied. That would come after he had slept, and presumably dreamt. Funny, but he didn’t dream that much of home, or else he never remembered the dreams he had. Was it perfume from a dress that made his brain so digress? No, he had strange dreams here in Ireland even before he met Siobhan, and anyway the only perfume she wore was the scent of the wildflowers that she undoubtedly danced in like a character in a romantic landscape painting. Was it that the irregular sleep had upset his REM patterns? Maybe. Or was it that his head was so filled with the dreams of others at home that he had no need to generate his own? He did not want to think about it, but to enjoy the pleasant dreams that the experiences of the last few hours would inspire.
He lay down, waited for Morpheus to come and draw him into his warm embrace. As it were. However, as one of the great cosmic ironies would have it, it seemed that Morpheus was on his coffee break right now. Or maybe he’d popped down the shop to get some caffeine pills and left his inexperienced assistant in charge of the office. Or else he was playing minesweeper on his computer. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t coming down to Schillerz and lifting him into a world of oneiric bliss, because he just lay there, reflecting with his already overextended conscious mind on the goings on of the past few days. He also noticed things that had passed him by before, like the dampness in the room, and the way the paint was falling off the ceiling, and the dust around the edges of the carpet. He didn’t think it would be like this, the aftermath of his first sexual encounter. It seemed the bliss had dissipated like dandelion seeds in the summer breeze and left him with an empty, spent, feeling that was totally unanticipated. Yet when he thought of Siobhan again he was eager to once again have her in his arms and go through the whole experience again. What cruel tricks nature played on us, he thought.
This he thought while his thoughts were still relatively coherent. But he could feel becoming more intense and less structured, like the time last night when he tried to sleep outside. But how could they have been otherwise? There was so much to consider that had happened him in the last few days. Years later, when he worked his way up to reading Ulysses he would reflect on the forlorn task of the author taking it upon himself to catalogue the last forty-eight hours of his life. Some brave or perhaps foolish soul living in some time in the future when machines did all the useful work, when men had landed on the moon, and people could sit around at a machine and converse with people from all corners of the earth, dance to repetitive, mechanical music while on drugs that kept them up all night, and talk to people on telephones that they carried round in their pockets that signaled a call by playing Mozart’s 40th and when the fuehrer’s dream of seeing the New York skyline brought crashing to the ground was brought to fruition would try in vain to capture the conflicting feelings he experienced, but he guessed, would fail miserably. For how could he possibly imagine what it was like to grow up in the Reich, believing that the world’s destiny was in your hands, believing that you belonged to the Master Race, only to find that belief shattered by the appearance of a foreign girl so perfect beyond description as to shatter those fallacies? Who, furthermore, would have the audacity to try to describe her in words, reduce her beauty and voluptuity to a few words trotting dutifully across a printed page? Yet he wanted his story to be told, and knew deep down that he had neither the literary skill nor the intellectual rigour to tell it himself.
He’d also heard some pernicious rumour put about by one of the more subversive conscripts that Himmler did for his whole life what Schillerz wanted some hypothetical future author to do for the last few days of his life. It could not be true, for if such a high-ranking member of the party wrote down all his thoughts, he would never get any work done and the Reich’s war effort would be jeoprodised. That could not happen, could it? If only he had the certainty he had a few days ago. Would he ever get it back, or was it, like his virginity, lost in the Irish mists? It seemed his long dark night of the soul was becoming a nightly ritual. At least, he reasoned, if he lay there long enough, his fatigue would get the better of his angst, or whatever the English word for that was, and he would fall asleep. But how much more of this torture would he have to go through? For a while he felt like taking out his radio and contacting home so he could complete his mission, but this, like so many things in the past few days, passed. Maybe his own mind was a microcosm of the whole world. Who knew what sort of world it would be if his side lost the war, or even for that matter, if they won? These were things he had never considered before, and now came spilling out like water from a kettle that was boiling over. What would happen when all the water was evaporated? He was losing more than sleep if he was thinking of such things.
Perhaps he had nights like this at home as well, nights where he woke up after a few forlorn hours sleep with a shudder, drenched in his own sweat, but chose not to remember them. Maybe when he got home he would have only pleasant memories of Ireland, and these nights of pain would be lodged in the dusty, creaking filing cabinets at the back of his mind. Was this constant need to filter out the junk memories a unique feature of Schillerz 1.0, or a universal human defence mechanism? And what was happening him now? Was he being upgraded to someone who could confront his demons, or had his DOS just crashed for a few days? He did not know for sure what was happening him, except that slowly, stealthily, sleep was creeping up on him and massaging his back and limbs with its tender fingers.

He’s in an eighteenth century castle, or what he imagines as such, from the fantasies of German filmmakers of the period. Huge halls, banqueting tables covered in sumptuous feasts like he had never witnessed before, frescoes surrounded by gilded stuccoes that wander round the ceiling in Brownian motions. The sun peers through a stained glass window, shedding light on the dust particles that float around, illuminating them, making them seem part of something bigger than themselves. He’s led to a boudoir by a servant wearing the clothes they used to round about this time, big white socks going right up to the knees, crenellated velvet shirt, powdered wig with a small pony tail at the back, to a boudoir with a four-poster bed and gold embossed sheets. He looks out the window, sees a moat in which crocodiles swim around, patrolled by guards wearing salient helmets and carrying long spears and heavy bayonets. He wonders what they are keeping out, but then realizes when one of them looks up at him sternly that they are instead keeping him in. He lies down on the bed. It is so soft, it seems to suck him in. in fact, it is sucking him in. he is drawn down, through the velvet sheets, as if in quicksand, but there is no loss of breath, only the warm, tender, tactile feel of the velvet sheets caressing each part of his body. He floats down to the bottom of this sea of velvet, and there is a room filled with soft cushions with polychromatic embroidery and small mirrors. On the walls are tapestries and mirrors which reflect the tapestries, creating a cornucopia of colour and light. Sitting on one of the cushions is Siobhan, draped in thin, almost transparent velvet robes through which he can see her pert nipples and the outline of her pubic hair. She stands up, starts to do a dance in circles, her robes gradually uncoiling as she does. When the last robe falls off, she grabs him in a tight embrace, then starts to unbutton his shirt, then pulls off and socks, and keeps going until he is naked. As she does this, he notices the monkey playing sitar in the corner of the room. When he is completely naked, she seems to float to the ground, lies with her legs spread and gently opens her vagina. He climbs on top of her, but as he penetrates her, he feels not the moist tenderness to which he has just been introduced, but a rumbling, as if of an earthquake. Then they feel themselves being sucked back up to the boudoir from which he came. They land on the bed, and see the ramparts falling down around the castle, the chandeliers crashing to the ground, the guards outside crushed by the rubble falling from the castle. The rest of the castle comes crashing to the ground, but their room floats gently to surface. They walk out alone, naked, into the moat where the crocodiles rub their scaly skins against them like puppy dogs seeking affection, then beyond, past the remnants of the walls, into the meadows beyond, where the sun kisses the horizon in the distance.

He wakes, realises with more than the usual alacrity that he’s been dreaming. His first instinct is not to make sense of it, although it’s obvious what it was about, but to wonder what would have happened if he had stayed asleep. Would they have lived happily ever after? Would they have been predominantly happy with some occasional conflicts? Where would they have gone, how would they have made freedom work for them? These are things his subconscious obviously did not have time to consider. He looked at the old Dutch clock on the mantle piece, it told him it was half past eight. It seemed that after all the angst of the night before, that he had gotten quite a lot of sleep after all. He felt the pleasant fatigue of someone who has had almost enough sleep but doesn’t need to get out of bed right away. He wondered if anyone else was awake in the house, then guessed that Siobhan was probably up feeding the animals in the garden. He got up briefly, peeked through the curtains to see if he could see her, but the angle from his window was all wrong, though he was pleased to see that it was a fine day outside. He leapt back into bed, pulled the blankets tightly around himself, pressed his head into the pillow. Life felt good at this brief, ephemeral juncture; he knew that whatever the future would bring, that he could stay under the sheets for a lethargic hour or so. Why had he placed so little value on these pleasures in the last years of his life? Why was he so focused on the big question, the reich, the herronvolk, the question of who should run the Earth and how they should conquer it? Weren’t the small things in life more important? Couldn’t the way the sun pored through the curtains be as beautiful, and in it’s way, as powerful as the marches in Nuremburg, or the tanks ploughing into Russia? Wasn’t it a miracle, in it’s own way, that he was here to witness these things happening? And shouldn’t he be impressed by the power of his imagination, newly liberated, it seemed to create dreams as baroque as those he had had the last few nights? As these thoughts went gently through his head like visitors casually strolling in and out of rooms at an art exhibition, he started to hear noises coming from downstairs, first, the opening of cupboards and then the hissing of a wireless set being tuned in. once again, his equanimity is short-lived, as once again he starts to wonder if his presence in the country is considered a newsworthy manner. He dreads the propaganda they must use to describe him, and wonders how far away from their perception of a national socialist he has become. He is torn, once again, between getting out of bed and going down to listen to the radio, taking care, of course, not to seem to anxious; or to just stay here a while in comfort, hoping Siobhan will bring him breakfast in bed.

He lies in bed a little while longer his ears as pricked up as it’s possible for ears to be, but all he can hear is a muffled sound that carries the same patterns and intonations of English speech, but loses it clarity somewhere between the radio speaker and his ears. He wonders, having nothing better to do, where this point is, this Maginot line which, when crossed, renders the coherent meaningless, robs the words of their import much as he’d been robbed of his virginity the evening before. Could he point to this line, step across it, mark it with a chalk mark? He gives it some thought and realises that the line would not be the same line for everybody, though perhaps one day, like the uniforms and the slogans of the Hitlerjugend, they would be harmonised. There was a time when this would have seemed like a good idea to Schillerz, but it has passed and the moment when it did cannot be pinpointed either. He imagines a world where every woman was as beautiful as Siobhan and then realises what an anticlimax seeing her would have been. Yet now that his old certainties are beginning to erode, will have to find something to replace them with.
How would all this look, to someone who didn’t know the context? A slender, unshaven young man, lying in bed on a crisp, sunny morning. Yet in the maelstrom behind his chiselled features a torrent gushes which wipes away his old weltanschauung and leaves a tabula rasa for some new Pygmalion to mould. No accident on the road to Damascus, no apple falling from a tree, no water spilling from a bathtub, just a series of nerve endings and synapses bumping against one another, invisible to the naked eye, or even the most accomplished neurologist with the most sophisticated x-ray machine.

He hears a knock on the door, replies. In walks Siobhan, looking a little frazzled but no less ravishing, if anything, her earthy beauty in enhanced by the disordered state of her hair, and her tired eyes make her look more seductive. She sits down on the bed, starts to stroke Schillerz’ face. “So, have you just been lying here doing nothing, while I’ve been busy feeding the animals and getting breakfast ready?”, she asks. How can he possibly answer this? How can he tell her what a dark nigh of the soul he has been through, and what a moment of epiphany has been its coda. He just looks into her large blue eyes and tells her that he stayed up all night waiting for her. She says nothing, just giggles and kisses him passionately on the lips. Then she jerks her head in the direction of the door and says, “C’mon, lazy bones, breakfast is ready. She throws a kiss in his direction as she walks out the door, her blond tresses and loose skirt tails following her.
He drags himself out of bed, looks at the unruly pile of clothes that would probably have earned him a court martial a few days ago. He rubs the dust from his eyes, shakes his head as if to discard the remnants of sleep from his brain. He puts his clothes on, walks over to the window to let some of the carbon dioxide emitted by his febrile brain out of the room. It’s quite a struggle to let the air in, as the window does not seem to have been opened in a while and has ossified into near-immovability. Yet his teutonic brawn is not weakening the way his political convictions are, and the window eventually breaks open, casting flakes of paint onto the dust carpet.
He walks downstairs, into the dining room. Siobhan is quietly eating some cornflakes, and gives his presence the merest acknowledgement, while Tom peeks out from behind the morning’s Irish Times, shifts the food around his mouth rapidly, and offers Schillerz an effusive welcome. “Patrick, how are yeh?” He looks at his watch, briefly, and says, “Well, it looks like you had a good sleep.” Schillerz nods and says yes, he did. Then he is offered some cornflakes, which he does not recognise. He looks at the box and wonders if it is some chicken-based product, but discards that possibility. Tom picks up on his confusion, and says, “There’s milk there, it’s unpastuerised, as Siobhan just got it from the cow this morning, but sure we’ve been drinking it like that for years and it hasn’t done us any harm, has it, Siobhan?” She nods her head in assent. Schillerz tentatively takes the box of flakes, pours some into a bowl, and covers them with milk. He looks around, to judge the reaction, and it appears he has done the right thing. Then Tom asks if he wants sugar, and his face lights up. Ah, it seems that you can take the German out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of the German, and that Schillerz’ tooth is as sweet as it ever was. His euphoria is palliated a little when Tom interjects: “Go easy on it, mind, you know how ‘tis rationed at the moment. He sprinkles some sugar on the flakes and eats a spoonful, which meets with his approval. He isn’t reminded of how good they taste, because he’s never had them before. “So”, Tom asks from across the table, “did you get round to reading that book I gave you?” “No”, replies Schillerz, “I was tired last night and fell asleep very soon.” “Oh well, you might get a chance to sit out and read it in the sun later on.” The prospect sounded appealing to Schillerz, but disturbingly, the first image that this picture brings to mind is of the fuehrer in the Bercthesgarden, reading a novel with his dachsund at his side. He is visibly disturbed at this and shakes his head noticeably. Tom asks if there is anything the matter, he replies in the negative. Then he asks if there is anything in the paper. Tom replies, “Oh, you know, all the windy ways of men.” He looks at Schillerz, sees he does not recognise the quote, and says, “That’s Tennyson.” He pauses for a second, then says, sneering slightly, “Hibernophobe pig.” Schillerz makes a show of comprehension while he tries to figure out what this means. Somewhere in the back of his mind, like smoke signals from a different tribe, comes the information that “Hibernia” was the Roman word for Ireland. He doesn’t know where this came from, probably one of the officers at his abwehr camp. He guesses that “phobe” has the same roots as “phobia” and puts the two together. He wonders who this Tennyson could be that hates Irish people so much. An Englishman maybe, although he was always led to believe they were weak and effeminate and could not imagine any of them working up anything resembling rascism. But then, maybe he was being lied to. Another seed of doubt planted in his mind. He is still curious to know if his presence here has been reported, so he asks if there has been any news on the radio. Tom takes a look at his watch and tells him the news is coming on in five minutes, and walks over to the radio to turn the volume up. Schillerz offers a show of gratitude, yet he is tense while he waits for the news to come on, so much so that the ads for cleaning products and cough remedies pass him by. When the news comes and there is no news of the war, he is frustrated rather than relieved. He is in part disappointed that his presence here has not been acknowledged, but he also still wants to know how the war is going, even now, in this time of uncertain allegiance, or elective affinities. He listens to the news of foot-and-mouth disease and rationing with increasing incredulity. What sort of dreamworld are these people living in? Do they not know what a conflagration is going on around them? He notices Tom putting his paper down on the table, asks him if he can take a look, receives assent. He looks through it in bewilderment. Instead of reports of El Alamein or the battle of Britain, he sees a host of reports on foot-and-mouth, rationing, and the constant repetition of the words “De Valera”, “Taoiseach” and “Fianna Fail”. He wonders what they mean, and how he can find out. Maybe there is something in one of Tom’s books that can tell him, but he would appear impolite if he read something other than the book Tom had offered him. The imperative to read this book was now more urgent.
Tom got up to go and go to the bathroom, and Siobhan reached her hand across the table and started rubbing his hand with her fingertips. “So, why don’t we go for a walk in the fields, Patrick?”
He was unsure of how to respond to this. He wanted to start reading that book by Voltaire as soon as possible, but did not wish to be impolite in any way to Siobhan. He doubted that he could be, as she stood there in that flirtatious pose, swinging her hips gently and twisting he forelock around her finger. “Yes, I guess so”, he replied, feigning enthusiasm as competently as he could at this early hour, but I’d like to start reading that book your father gave me.”
“Ah”, replied Siobhan with a disdain Schillerz had never seen her display before, “he’ll have you turned into a bookworm like himself, hardly ever seeing the light of day.”
Schillerz was a little surprised at this. “Doesn’t he have injuries that prevent him from leaving the house?”, he asked.
“Well, that’s what he says, and he does start writhing in pain now and again, but when we go to the doctor he says there’s nothing wrong and it must be pscyco.. psyscoso…. All in his head.”
“I see”, said Schillerz, scratching his chin in a way that would be unmistakably teutonic to a more knowledgeable person. And how long has he been having these attacks?”
“Oh, years and years, since I was about fifteen.”
Schillerz blushed a little as he asked, “And how old are you now?”
She joined him in a rictus of embarrassment, though hers was tempered with a certain amount of coyness. “I’m twenty-three. And while we’re on the subject, how old are you?”
Twenty-three, thought schillerz. So the attacks must have started in 1933. what could he make of this? He would have to inquire further, without appearing to officious. “I’m twenty-one”, he said, in his haste to find out more about the origins of Tom’s pains, he didn’t even realise that the girl he was with was his senior. “But tell me, about your father’s pains. Have they always been as bad as they are now, or have they got gradually worse?”
Looking slightly disconcerted, she thought for a while and then said, “They started to get really bad around the start of November before last, though, like I said, the doctor can never find anything wrong with him. Why are yeh so interested, anyway?”
Why was he so interested? How could he possibly answer this? She had just told him that her father’s pains had started at the same time as the national socialist revolution and reached their nadir at the same time as the Kristallnacht? Did she know the significance of these dates? Was her father responding psychosomatically to these events, or was there a deeper, more profound psychic reaction going on? He wished he knew more about these things, but for the moment, it was imagination, not erudition that he required.
“Oh, my father had something like that as well. I was wondering if your dad had the same thing. But mine only had it for two years, then it went away.”
“Aw”, said Siobhan, and interlinked little fingers with him to show a bond had developed between them. “And how’s your da now?”
Schillerz paused, looking a little melancholy, and said, “He’s dead.”
Siobhan could only look sympathetic, grasp his hand and say, “Oh, I’m Sorry”, to which Schillerz nodded thankfully in response. But not a one to dwell on the macabre, she quickly returned to her normal vivacity and said, “Well, no use dwellin’ on the past, d’yeh want to come for a walk? Yeh never know, we might find yer tent”.
Tent, thought Schillerz and then remembered the story he had fabricated to explain his presence here. “Yes, he said, you never know.” Siobhan looked around, contemplated the landscape, pointed in one direction and said, “it looks like yeh came from that way originally. If we go this way”, she said, twisting her body around in a way that brought back memories of the one time his parents had brought him to the ballet in Munich, “I can show you a way to get to the next town, whenever you want to leave us, which I hope” she said, reaching up to plant a kiss on the lips, won’t be for a while.” She kissed him again, then grabbed his hand and pulled him in the direction she wanted to go. She walked a few steps and then put her hands up to her mouth and said, “Oh, Lord, I nearly forgot about Plato.”
She walked over to a kennel that Schillerz had not paid much attention to up to now, opened the door and made some beckoning gestures. Out jumped a thin, reddish-brown dog which leapt affectionately on Siobhan and started to lick her face. When she settled down, she caught sight of Schillerz and started to growl. When Siobhan noticed this she called his name and tried to pull him back, but she resisted and ran, berking, towards Schillerz. Panicking, he took flight and hopped over the fence with the dog barking at his shoes. Puffing and panting, and checking for bruises, he looked over at Siobhan, and asked, “Is he always like this?”, jerking his head in direction of the frothing jaws of Plato. Siobhan approached the dog, started to pat her on the head, and said, “No, only when she senses there’s something wrong with someone. When a friendly person approaches, she is never like this.” She paused a little, giving Schillerz a suspicious look that he had never seen before and put the fear of God in him in a way that no amount of canine vitriol could. She beckoned Schillerz to come back through the gate, but her flirtatiousness had been replaced by a peremptory, dictatorial tone that worried Schillerz even more. “Come over close to me, let him see that you’re my friend”, she said, but was doing little to suggest any amity herself. She held Schillerz’ hand and held it until she was confident enough that it’s anger had dissipated, then let her run out the gate.
“So, tell me Patrick, what have you done to make my dog so angry?”
He was perplexed by this question and told her that he had never seen the dog before, nor even known that she had a dog, which was the truth.
“I know”, replied Siobhan, as she beckoned Schillerz to follow her out the gate, “but you must have done something radically wrong in your life, because Plato can sense negative karma unfailingly.”
Following her out the gate, and into the green meadows beyond, he assumed a look of humility as he admitted that he had no idea what the word “karma” meant. Grabbing the dog’s neck tightly as she fastened the lead around his neck, she breathed deeply through her nose, rearranged her hair into some kind of order, and said, irritably, impatiently, “Jesus, Patrick, isn’t it completely obvious? Your karma is the balance between the negative and positive things you have done in your life. I’m not an expert in the subject, as my father is, but I trust in Plato’s judgement. Now tell me, what have you been hiding? And for that matter, who the hell are you?”
Not for the first time, Schillerz was rendered speechless. He was astonished to see such a tergiversation occur so rapidly, and with such an implausible impetus. Could this jaunty, fresh-faced, carefree young beauty have turned into a snarling beast as the result of the mere barking of a dog? Then he thought of how rapidly his own views of the world had changed in the last few days, and elected to be as diplomatic as he could.
“How can you have such faith in the judgement of a mere animal”, he asked, feigning tentativeness, clenching his teeth as he belatedly realized that she would see through his ruse. She did so by turning towards him, glaring with a seething inner violence for a few seconds, then breathing deeply, but this time closing her eyes for a few seconds and seeming to drift into a parallel universe from which she returned a calmer person.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, Patrick. And don’t be so condescending towards my dog. He isn’t called Plato for nothing. He does have genuine psychic ability”. Then she turned towards him, took him by the hand, and said, “Look, there may be some things you’ve done in your life that you may regret but have yet to atone for. You seem like a decent person to me, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But you need to tell me more things about yourself.” Then she paused, still holding his hands, looking pensive in a way he had never seen before as she gazed into the fields stretching toward the horizon. “Maybe I’m the wrong person to talk to about this. It might be better if you talked to my father. He’s not a professional counselor or anything, but he is a man of great erudition. Maybe he can tell you why Plato reacts to you the way he does.”
Schillerz gulped the same way he did half a dozen times already since our story began. “I think I may already know”, he said, so quietly that the words were almost drowned out by the gentle summer breeze, “but I’m not sure you’d believe me.
“Patrick”, she said, “My father has been to so many places and done so many things and told me so many stories that I doubt there is anything that would stretch my credulity any more.”
“Oh Yes, what sort of things has your father experienced?”
She gave him that sort of sceptical look that was by now becoming familiar, and which he reckoned he would have to get used to. Her eyebrows raised, her nostrils dilated, a position she somehow managed to freeze for a second and a half as if she was in a film and the projector suddenly stopped. When she came back to life, she said, “Don’t try and change the subject, Patrick. My da can tell you about all the amazing stuff he’s done himself, and…” she adopted a slightly ironic look, “probably will. It’s you that we’re discussing right now, Patrick.” She paused a little, glanced briefly at the contemplative look on his face that suggested that a lengthy confession was not on the cards. “Look, you’re going to have to confront this stuff at some point in your life. If you don’t want to tell me that’s fine, just say so, but then I’ll tell my dad how Plato reacts to you and he’ll want an explanation. If you don’t give him one he’ll ask you to leave the house. And you don’t want that, now do yeh?” With these words she reverted to being the flirtatious girl he first met, her grip on his hand loosening to a caress, her eyes lighting up, her hair being tossed back. It was a partial relief to Schillerz, who did not have the guile to realize that the stick had merely been hidden from view while the carrot was tantalizingly dangled in front of him. Instead of seeing through this ruse, so much more sophisticated than any of his own, he got a little excited, excited in the sense a Catholic would use the word “excitement” in a confession box because they didn’t want to say “erection”, “hard-on”, “boner”, “stiffy”, “got wood”, “on the honk”, “tilt in my kilt”, “crimson crowbar” “eight inches of love meat”, “pale ivory tower”, “honey-hued column”, “throbbing shaft”, “plenipotentiary instrument”, or even “ossifying”, “hardening”, “having an erect member”, or “reactive penile augmentation”.
Nice touch of the Rabelasian, that, n’est ce pas?, though, truth be told, Schillerz wasn’t exactly gargantuan in his proportions. Anyway, the blood rushing towards the lower end of his body did much to loosen the projectile organ on the other end of his body. He started to giggle slightly, the way you do when you’re young and have lots of hormones and have just lost your virginity.
When the cachinnation, which elicited nothing but disdain from Siobhan was suppressed, he calmed down a little, and said, “No, I wouldn’t want that”. Then he paused a little, and, in an attempt to buy himself some time, said, “Maybe this isn’t the right time to discuss these things. Maybe when you and your dad are together we can talk them over”. Siobhan closed her eyes, took a deep breath and nodded acquiescently, and said “Okay”, but could think of nothing further to add. This initiated an awkward period of silence when the distant twittering of birds and even the odd grasshopper became all the more perceptible. Though Siobhan’s hand held his, it was as if she was not there, as there was no discourse between them, nor any immediate prospect of physical intercourse, nor even any eye contact. He despaired of the carefree frivolity of a few days ago ever returning. If he continued living this lie there would always be a distance between them, yet if he came out and admitted he was a nazi they would hardly embrace him and thank him for his honesty. Like a loan shark preying on tenement dwellers, the thought of radioing home had returned, followed by the even more frightening thought that Tom had started to go through his stuff, and find the radio, rendering all his current soul-searching rather academic. He shook his head frantically in an effort to dispel these thoughts, briefly impervious to the fact that he was in the presence of a young woman and her unusually percipient dog.
He was made aware of their presence when they both stopped in their tracks, she to stare and wonder what sort of Pandora’s Box she had been trying to prize open, he to bark, not threateningly as before, but as if to show mild disdain and impatience. “I’m sorry”, he said, looking around, breathing the air, backing away cautiously from the dog and generally realizing where he was, “but the last few days have brought so many shocks to my system that I’m not sure I can deal with any more.” Siobahn started to walk again, Plato leading her acquiescently. “Yes, I can see that, and I’m sorry I brought all this angst upon you…” she paused, glanced in the direction of the dog, who was sniffing around a clump of grass, and added, “we brought all this upon you, but I get the sense that you’re repressing something very significant and the longer you keep doing this the more you’re going to hurt yourself.” This struck him as being so insightful that he revised his initial judgment about her even further. His first impression of her as an earthy, playful young woman had gradually eroded as successive layers of her character were revealed. Yet each of them only made her more attractive to him. Was this more evidence of a change in his character? Surely just a short while ago the qualities he would have looked for in a woman, other than physical attractiveness, in which Siobhan was not lacking, would have been loyalty, cooking and cleaning skills, and ability to bring up children of the Reich. But, paradoxically, the very depth and complexity which made it so imperative for him to stay with her made it more difficult to be honest with her, or with her father, an equally enigmatic character. Years later a novel would be written called Catch-22 which encapsulated his situation perfectly, but right now he could only think of a majorly inadequate word like “quagmire”.

Schillerz thanks her for her concern, acknowledges that she is probably right in her erstwhile new-age analysis. He tries to think of a way to explain to her that there is a risk involved in telling the truth, but there’s no way of telling her this without implying that he doesn’t trust her or her father. This is the point where the novel could become a Kafkaesque trial or Catch-22 or a Crying of lot 49, endlessly looping back upon itself. But if that happened, would you want to read any more?
So, Schillerz asks some more questions about her father. Is he really as tolerant as he seems, or is this a show he puts on in front of visitors? What is his attitude to the war in Europe, really? Why did he give him that particular book to read? She answers with all the languid functionality of a bus conductor on a wet Tuesday morning, unaware that he is not avoiding the subject but seeking out a tactful way to approach it, like a vulture gradually circling its prey. Eventually she tires of all these questions and stops to ask what they all purport to. Struggling to find the right words, he said summoning up all his limited reserves of tact, “There are things I need to know about you and your father before I can be fully honest with you. I’m sure your dad has told you many stories because I can sense what an honest person you are…” he jerked his head ironically in Plato’s direction, “but what I have to tell you really will stretch your credulity. I need to be sure you will react the right way.”
“Patrick”, she replied, breathing in deeply, “whatever this sounds like, I’m being completely honest with you. My dad probably knows what your dark secrets are already. He has…” she paused, twirling her hair, not in the flirtatious way to which he had become accustomed, but in a neurotic, twitching way, and continued, again drawing her breath, “a sort of gift for judging peoples characters. It’s unfailing, some people have been bewildered by it, some frightened. But none have denied its existence.” He paused to take all this in, though he was much less shocked than he would have been a few days ago. He wondered if he should call the O’ Grady’s bluff and ask her father where Schillerz came from. For some reason, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Then he started to think of Candide, and its German setting, of Tom’s pains which corresponded eerily with events in the history of the Reich, but most of all, of Toms words,

Whatever you may have done in the past, I know you’re basically a good person.

They echoed as if around the corridors of some deep, dark cave that formed itself long before we were there to test out its acoustics. Then he got this adrenaline rush and decided he wanted to know if these strange powers were for real. He took a look at Plato, decided he was tiring a little, and suggested to Siobhan that it might be a good time to take him home. She laughed, a little bit more like the girl he had first met would have done. “Sure we’ve only been walking him for twenty minutes, and he doesn’t exactly look tired to me”. There was more than a hint of truth in this statement, he reflected as he observed Plato dash towards a lark which narrowly escaped being caught between his slavering jaws, feathers fluttering towards the ground as it rose stridently into the azure sky. Yet this sight of natural wonder didn’t do much for Schillerz right now, as he was impatient to test out his hypothesis on Tom. It seemed he would have to endure the fresh air, the scenery and the biodiversity for at least another hour, unless he could find a way to tire out the dog before then, which was unlikely. The other option was to tell Siobhan of this plan, if he could put it to her tactfully. This was not something that could be relied upon, but he would give it a shot.
“Siobhan”, he said tentatively, “I wasn’t being completely honest when I said that Plato looked tired.” She gave him a look that said “No Shit”, or whatever the idiom for that phrase was at the time. “I’m actually eager to find out if what you say about your father is true.” Her eyebrows raised a little in a gesture of surprise that she tried unsuccessfully to conceal.
“I wasn’t lying to you. You didn’t think I was, did you?” she asked, showing a sternness that he had not witnessed before.
Licking his lips as if salivary glands were able to generate tact, he said, a bit too eagerly, “Of course I believe you, you’ve never lied to me before, but…” he paused, licked his lips some more, and said, “I’m just eager to see the evidence, not because I’m sceptical or anything, but because I think it would be really thrilling to experience his powers at first hand.”
Keeping one eye firmly on the dog and avoiding any direct eye contact with Schillerz, she said, peremptorily, “Well, you can turn back and go home if you want, but Plato is going to finish his walk, so you’ll have to do it without me.”
Maybe the lip-licking trick worked a little, because he did have enough discretion to know that going home by himself wasn’t a viable option, as Siobhan had been antagonised enough for one day. Yet he knew that, no matter how how sweet the song of the birds or how beguiling the twittering of grasshoppers, however many rabbits dart out of hedges, he won’t enjoy this walk, preoccupied as he is with his own ego and other’s perception of his identity. Nothing in nature, not even the elegent form of Siobhan, with the wind tossing her hair gently, her hips thrusting and her breasts bouncing as she walks through the long, yellowing grass can distract him from this preoccupation. For each of them, for the duration of this walk could not be further away from each other than they are. It’s something that briefly occurs to him, in a moment when Plato chases after a lark that leaps suddenly from it’s hiding place and flies to freedom, narrowing escaping the hound’s frothing jaws, and is berated by Siobhan. He feels like he is a mere observer, as if he was watching the scene in a movie, or if he was playing soccer and he was in an offside position but deemed not to be interfering with play. It was something he hadn’t given all that much thought to before, the distances between people, the inadequacies of verbal communication, the sort of philosophical meanderings he would have considered either trivial or effete just a short while ago.
Eventually, he could sense that the walk was coming to it’s half-way point, unless, of course, they went home a different way. He noticed Plato running eagerly down a hill to a copse surrounded by a carpet of small, white flowers, a place that was obviously alluring for him. Siobhan, too was preparing to rest, taking the last deep breaths before she would sit down and hopefully be a bit more communicative with him. They entered the copse and saw the old well at it’s center, surrounded by all sort of wildflowers, none of which Schillerz could name. It wasn’t a really deep well, just a spring with stones built neatly around it, long enough ago for a variety of mosses and lichens to grow. There wasn’t that much water flowing, but enough for Plato to quench his thirst. After he had done so, he started to run around, jumped on top of Siobhan and gratefully received a pat on the back, then approached Schillerz, then backed away as if needing to take care of other, more important things. At the same time Siobhan approached the well, crouched down as if about to do press-ups, and sipped gently from the well. Schillerz marveled at the grace with which she was able to accomplish this, this child of Pan, Mother Nature’s favourite daughter sipping water that could have come straight from the bowels of the earth, yet still seeming to transcend everything on the earth with her ethereal, oneric beauty. As he admired the way her curvaceous, callipygous hips gyrated as she took each gulp, she looked back over her shoulder and asked, “Aren’t you going to have some? You must be thirsty as well.” As this was the first thing she’d said to him in over half an hour, it seemed impolite to refuse, though he feared that he may be swallowing all manner of insects along with the water. She lifted herself up carefully, taking one elbow of each rock she was resting upon, pulling her sleeves down again and beckoning Schillerz to perform the same process in reverse. He crouched down apprehensively, helped by Siobhan the way a social worker helps an invalid, he tried to reach the water without getting water all over his face and clothes, but failed miserably, as his elbow slipped off the rock and into the water. This elictited a laugh from Siobhan, the sort of laugh you must all have witnessed when confronted with evidence of the cultural divide between urban and rural areas that exists now as much as ever. Schillerz couldn’t see the funny side, but mustered a giggle as he tried to squeeze the excess water from his sleave.
“You city boys are funny”, she said as she watched him struggle to get up again. He couldn’t think of much to say in response, but she mistook his shyness for disdain, and felt compelled to make an apology. “Listen, Patrick, I’m sorry about the way I treated you earlier, but I do trust in Plato’s judgment. He is a really exceptional dog”, she said, a look of irony descending on her face as Plato started to dig into some leafmould as if searching for a lost bone. “I can see why you’re so eager to talk to my father, but let me be there when you discuss these things with him, sure you will?” “Of course”, he replied, drawing closer to her and trying, tentatively, to sit down on the leafmold next to her, “but even if your da…” he smiled inwardly at recognizing this idiom “isn’t shocked at what I have to reveal, I’m sure you’ll be.” “Are they really that bad, those secrets that yeh’ve been keeping from us?” she asked, stunned that the innocent creature sitting next to her could have such secrets to hide. Relieved that she was reverting to her more amicable mode of discourse, peppered as it was with local idioms with which he was just becoming familiar, and pleased to her desire to be intimate with him again, he replied, feigning a casual, cavalier manner, “well, remember the way the dog reacted?” She could only grimace assent, and eager to get away from the subject, decided to go and pick some flowers, beckoning Schillerz to come join her. She asked if he knew what they were called, and interrupted his stammering response by pointing to each cluster and naming them. When they each had a bundle of flowers carefully plucked from each cluster, Siobhan decided it was time for them to walk home with her dog and her…. Well, how would you define her relationship with Schillerz at this moment? in tow. Though they didn’t say that much to each other, at least they were back on holding-hands terms, which couldn’t be a bad thing. And though he was still preoccupied with his coming encounter with Tom, he was able to appreciate his surroundings a bit more on the way back… home, he almost thought, strange that he could consider himself so intimate with such an enigmatic man and such a capricious girl, but then they had both been extremely hospitable with him.
When they got home it was still only noon, the sun was high in the sky, casting the minimum shadows, a time, it seemed appropriate to Schillerz, to emerge from the shadows which he had been hiding in himself. Whoa! What brought that piece of poetry on? Was it the flight of the lark, the wind rustling the trees, the flowers in his hand? Or was it the girl in his other hand? Who knows, the varied forms that artistic inspiration can take. Siobhan told Schillerz that she had to feed the dog and some of the other animals, but that he could go in and talk to Tom for a while if he wanted. Then she kissed him. Not one of the prolonged, ecstatic tongue kisses which he had gotten used to, just a peck on the cheek, but enough to make him realize that, at least temporarily, he was back in her good books. He pushed the front door open and saw a ray of light come in through the window on the other side of the house which illuminated the little dust particles that would otherwise float around unnoticed. As the door stopped creaking, he started to notice a muffled sound coming from the living room. As he got closer it sounded more and more like snoring, the same sort of noise his own father used to make when he slept. Another time this might have been the stimulus for all sorts of Proustian recollections, but right now he was a little preoccupied. He stuck his head in the door of the living room, saw that Tom was indeed asleep, lying back on his favorite chair with a book open in his hands. He went back outside, as if to await orders from Siobhan. It seems a part of him that needed to be told what to do still existed, a need to be led. When he went back out the door the young woman whom he had designated fuehrer was starting to milk the cow, watched by the patient, thirsty, Plato. It seemed to reaffirm her connection with the earth, a link that was as real, or even more so, for being undeclared, lack any baggage of blood and soil rhetoric. When she caught sight of Schillerz exiting the door, she looked over at him, without removing her hands from the cow’s udders, and said, “don’t tell me, he’s fallen asleep again, right?” Schillerz looked a bit surprised and asked how she knew. She adopted a look of false modesty and said “Ah, sure, maybe I’m psychic as well.” Though he had been in Ireland for a few days now, it still took him a while to register this as a joke. Almost simultaneously with his minor ephinany, she asked, “I don’t suppose you could make us a cup of tea, could you?” He looked a bit bewildered, in a way that endeared him to Siobhan as it would only to someone with strong feelings of affection. He asked, tentatively where the tea was kept and got the sort of answer that you get from someone who is so familiar with her environment that she can’t imagine anyone needing to be guided around it. Schillerz reluctantly acquiesced, then headed into the kitchen, which was iridescent with the pellucid noontime sunlight, the sort of light that seems to affirm the existence of God to a young, pious child. He had a look round and found the kettle simmering gently on the stove, a big, old, dirty, solid fuel stove that drew sweat from anyone who stepped into it’s realm. He waved his hand over the top of the stove in an effort to discern which was the hottest part. When he figured this out, he dragged the thick steel kettle across the surface of the stove, then opened the fuel compartment and stoked it a little. Then he looked in the cupboard where she said the tea was kept, again, in a big, old grimy jar. He opened it and smelt the contents, stronger, perhaps a little more piquant than the tea he was used to at home. He waited a few seconds, opened the kettle to see if the water was almost boiled, then recoiled as a draft of steam blew into his face, causing his eyes to close reflexively and a film of scalding condensation to turn his face red. When he recovered his equilibrium, he tilted the spout of the kettle into the teapot and then stirred it round. He enjoyed the smoky, slightly tabid smell it produced, that reminded him of the stench of rotting mud and human sweat. It made him think once again, of some of the paradoxes in the ideology he had been brought up with. On the one hand, his people were supposed to be of the earth, yet there was an cloying, antiseptic, side to the national socialist doctrine that seemed to fear everything that was not shiny and glistening on the surface. The smell of the fetid, soaking tea leaves reminded him yet again that everything in nature was not necessarily like that. He sprinkled some tea leaves into the bottom of the teapot as if recreating some druidic ritual, some Stravinskyian rite of spring, of death and rebirth, though the only dissonant, atavistic sound in the background was the gentle hum of Tom’s thorax and the gentle tweeting of sparrows outside. He reflected on what he had been considering as he left the tea brew, then went to find some cups. He found them in a big, spacious, dusty cupboard, and had to fiddle around for a while before he found any that didn’t have cracked handles. Finally he thought of looking for some milk but reasoned that his putative paramour would rather have it straight from the cow. When he took it outside he was greeted with a mixture of satisfaction and relief. He sensed the latter, and was a bit offended by it, but chose, perhaps unwisely, not to dwell on it for a while, her father’s opinion of him being more pertinent at the present moment. He handed her a cup of tea gently, taking care not to spill any or scald her hand, then watched as she cooled it with milk fresh from the cow’s udders, watching the abstract, arbitrary patterns each drop made, wondering if, like snowflakes, each was unique. When she was finished she took a tentative, gentle sip, then gulped and said, apologetically, “Oh, Lord, I’m sorry, did you want some as well?” He grimaced slightly and said that he didn’t, that he preferred it black, which drew a suspicious glance from Siobhan. “Are you sure?”, she asked, “or are yeh just squeamish about drinking milk straight from the cow?” He couldn’t think of a response quick enough, so she said, “Y’know, me da was was explaining that it’s much better for yeh this way, that the pastuerisation process actually takes out most of the nutrients. Schillerz’ reply was an apprehensive one. “Well, that may be so, but it still seems strange to see it come right out of the cow. She laughed loudly, and though he was already thinking the same thing, she averred, “sure isn’t it more natural this way? Isn’t it what nature intended?” “Well”, replied, pensively, “only if nature intended humans to drink the milk of cows”. He was pleased with this evidence of his growing capacity for argumentation, yet this riposte led to one of those awkward, embarrassing silences. At least it seemed embarrassing to him, yet as he watched her continue to milk the cow, occasionally pausing to take a deep breath during which her bosom heaved pleasingly, she didn’t seem in the least embarrassed or self-conscious, just stoical and contented. He reflected that if she lived here alone with her bibliophile father she must be used to sharing space with someone in silence, particularly during the long, cold, drizzly winter months. Yet, for him, the need to continue conversation was still important. It seemed a pertinent point at which to steer the conversation back to the subject of her father.
“So”, he asked, taking a deep breath, “how long do you think your dad will stay asleep for?”
“Oh”, she replied nonchalantly, “It could be any length of time. Sometimes he’ll just pop off for a few minutes, other times…” She stopped miliking for a second or two, seemed to caress the cow’s udders as she looked blankly into space, “other times he can fall asleep for hours and hours, more and more as he’s gotten older…” She shook her head and started milking again, said, “still, he might have a few years left in him yet, and even if he doesn’t, well, sure he’s had a good life, I suppose.”
Hearing this words, it struck Schillerz with the impact of a bazooka striking him on the back of the head how selfish he was being. In his understandable haste to find out if Tom knew the truth about him, he had forgotten that Tom also had a life of his own, which right now consisted, perhaps of dreams as lurid and flamboyant as his own. “So”, he averred, trying to be tactful, “I suppose I might have to wait awhile before I learn if he knows the truth about me.” “Yes”, Siobhan replied, “but that might not be such bad thing.” Schillerz looked a bit perplexed, asked how this could be so.
“Well”, she replied contemplatively, looking briefly down at the bucket to see how much milk had been produced, “Me da tells me that both the Americans and the Germans…” as she uttered that last word, Schillerz searched for any gesture, any repressed look or glance that might suggest any import to this particular word, but in vain, “are developing a bomb so large, so powerful, that it can kill hundreds of thousands of people at once, just by splitting atomic particles so small they have to viewed through a huge microscope. He thinks that when one is about to be dropped, there’ll be scenes of hedonism like in some Greek play he read years and years ago, the backy or something ‘tis called.” Then she turned her attention back to milking the cow, and left Schillerz, whose head this combination of incongruity and culture shock had left spinning like top, to try to recover some equilibrium. Rather than dip his foot into the murky waters of where her father had come by this information, he merely meekly asked, “So, um, how does this affect us?” She responded by giving him the sort of look that primary school teachers give to particularly innocent children, which metamorphosised into a coy flirtatiousness as she said, “Well, what I find out about you may alter the way I feel about you forever. That would be like a bomb blast to our relationship. So maybe we should make the most of our time together before that happens.” As she said the last of those words, she breathed in deeply, allowing her breasts to protrude from beneath her dress, and then started to caress the cows udders suggestively, while looking over at Schillerz, licking her lips in the process. When our slow-witted hero figured out what was going on, he approached her but was pushed back by Siobhan with a firmly pressed index finger. “Not so fast loverboy”, she said, imitating perhaps a screwball comedy heroine she had seen in a filum at the pitchers, “You’ve got to wait until I finish milking the cows, plus some other stuff I’ve got to round the place.” Then she looked down at the bulge that had developed in his pants, and said, “And so does your little friend down there.” Schillerz turned the colour of a beetroot before it’s been marinated. Acutely aware of how she had embarrassed him, she set quickly to make amends by beckoning him over and planting a kiss on his lips. His head spinning once again, he asked if there was anything he could do to help, only to receive the sceptical look he had half expected. She sensed that she had put him at a loose end, and suggested that he go in and get some food for himself, or else read that book her father gave him. He decided to take her up on the latter suggestion, and walked back towards the house, looking over his shoulder to watch her blow a kiss from her lacteal hands. He pushed the door open as gently as he could, then tiptoed up the stairs in an effort not to arouse the man he had earlier been planning to wake. On the third or fourth step, he paused for a second to lean over the banister and listen out for snoring. He heard it, and inwardly cheered, a lugubrious humming that may ensure that he enjoys the pleasures of Siobhan’s flesh at least one more time. He went up to his room, found that the book was where he had left it, as were all his other things. Perhaps he had been a little paranoid with his fears that his radio might be interfered with. He picked up the book, flicked through it briefly, and went downstairs, listening again for that reassuring respitory noise as he exited the doorway, which he left ajar, in an effort to assure that it continued. He went out into the garden, where Siobhan was still milking her fecund bovine companion. She smiled at him gently, pointed out a chair where he could sit and read without having the sun in his face. He opened the book, started to read, impervious as to how intellectual this would have made him look to an outsider. The mere act of looking at a page furrowed his teutonic brow into a professorial, sagacious shape. Ironic, but anyone who didn’t know them might have thought he was some rustic Uncle Vanya and she his bucolic maid, when the opposite was much closer to the truth.
He started to read the book, living as he was in the age before penguin classics, let alone interactive e-books were invented, he was plunged straight into Voltaire’s strange, oneiric world rudderless and without preconception, a bit like Candide himself after the shipwreck. Yet he soon realized that the novel he was reading was not set in the Germany he or his ancestors had been brought up in, but a mythical version of his fatherland. He started to wonder what it would be like to be a fictional character in a skewed version of a foreign country, surrounded by types. As he started finding his way around the novel, he realized how similar the philosophy of pangloss was to that he had been brought up with. At one stage he looked up, breathed the air in deeply, watched the sights around him, and had the sort of epiphany he had never gotten before from reading a book. He remembered hearing how the Slavs had been put there to work for the teutons; in his language as well as ours, the etemology of “Slav” and “Slave” are similar. When he read the words of pangloss:

All things are created for some end: they must necessarily be
Created for the best end. The nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. Swines were invented so that we may eat pork, therefore we eat pork the whole year round….

And so on, he wondered if this charcter was meant to be taken at face value or not. Yet then he witnessed his certainties being chipped away like a block of wood being moulded into a sculpture of a bird in flight by a master sculptor. He realized that he, too, was in a world of discovery where everything he had been brought up to believe had been challenged. And he realised that surely, Tom must know this. So drawn into the world of this novel was Schillerz, he became impervious to what was going on around him. You know that feeling, dontcha? After a couple of hours of frenzied reading, punctuated only by the odd, frustrating word he couldn’t understand, he once again looked up and saw how far the sun had descended in the sky, how chilly the breeze had become, how muted and distant the song of the birds. Then he noticed that Siobhan was not around. Could she have left to go back in the house without telling him? He drew the page-marker gently from the spine of the book and placed it on the ground next to his seat. Then he thought it might rain, with a few inevitable cumulus and cumulo—nimbus gathering on the horizon. He picked it up again, wandered around the garden, where Plato was sleeping and having some fraught dreams if his heavy breathing indicated anything, where the cow (he had not found out the cow’s name) was once again grazing, where the chickens were back in their pens. He walked inside the house, entered the living room where Tom was still asleep, with the same book in his hand, then the kitchen, which was empty but where there was enough moisture in the air to suggest someone had been boiling water there in the recent past. He went upstairs, knocked gently on Siobhan’s door, and received a reply, not from within, but from his own room. He entered, saw her lying down on the bed, reading a book of her own, doing that thing she does with her hair.
He asked her why she had not told him she was finished doing the farmwork herself.
“Oh, I don’t know, you just looked so engrossed in that book you were reading, it seemed a bit unfair to disturb you.”
“Oh, I see”, he said, placing himself on the bed next to her. I really like that book alright it….. well maybe we can talk about the book some other time. But you know that I can always find time for you.”
She blushed a little, thanked him and put her hands around his neck as if to draw him closer. Surprisingly, he recoiled a little.
“What’s wrong”, she asked, not without a note of panic, which he sensed.
“Relax, it’s just I’ve got a slight fear that this may be our last time talking to each other, and there’s a few things I’d like to ask you first.” She nodded, a mixture of relief and assent, but remained silent. Slightly disconcerted, he asked, “What is it you see in me?”
She smiled, looking puzzled, as if there was no need to ask such a question. “That’s what you wanted to ask me? Sure isn’t it completely obvious? You’re handsome, you’re sweet, you’re innocent… C’mon, there must be more important things on your mind.”
“Well”, he said, blushing as if the red blood cells in her face had migrated by some weird osmosis to his, “I’d like to know a little more about you, and what your plans are.”
Looking as if she considered this question slightly intrusive, she said, “I’m going to stay here and take care of my father until he dies. I don’t know how long that’ll be but it’s a few more years I’m sure.” At this point Schillerz looked as if he wanted to interrupt her, but she continued, “If I can find someone to marry me before I get old, that’s fine. If not, well, maybe I’ll just travel the world, like da did himself.”
“Yes, yes, you must tell me more about that”, he responded, with a new note of enthusiasm. He seemed perplexed that this élan was not reciprocated, though it obviously didn’t occur to him that he was meant to be impressed with this pronouncement of extemporaneous feminism. “I really think you should ask him yourself”, she sighed. “Yes, but…” he tossed his head around a little, as if this would make the right words fall into place, “as I say, you might not want to talk to me after tonight.” She gave a look of incredulity, drew back a little, inhaled deeply, and said, “Very well. He was born in Dublin, to a working class family. He finished school pretty early, as his parents couldn’t afford to pay for his education. He got a job on ships sailing to England, and after a while he traveled further afield, to India, Africa, East Asia, where he picked up all that mysticism and such. He also started reading a lot, started learning about native customs and food, so much so that he eventually managed to become a spice trader himself. He met a Swedish woman, Tessa, on a trip to Stockholm, whom he married about a year before the revolution and then I was born. Against her wishes, he came back to fight in the war, spent a couple of years in jail, and when he came out, he had to track her back to Sweden, where he found her working as a prostitute and unable to support me properly. They came back, bought this house with money he had stashed away, and had enough left over to live on, buy the basic things we need. After a few months here, according to me da, she found living here so stifling that one day she ran off to Dublin, we don’t know what became of her, though he’s never given up on searching for her.”
There was a time when this story would have elictited shock or incredulity on Schillerz part, but that time was past, and all it’s aching joys were no more, and all its dizzy raptures.
“So”, he asked, with surprising equilibrium, “how old were you when you were living in the brothel?”
“Too young to remember, thanks be to Jesus”, she said, reverting briefly to the by now recognizable world-weary, cynical mode.
“So… Do you think it had any affect on you?”
“I don’t know. My father convinced the people in school that I was actually brought up in a Catholic convent in Belgium, though some of them have always had their suspicions. But I always felt a bit different, I wasn’t as religious or as pious as the other girls at school, a few of them, the more liberal ones, I’m still friends with, but the rest of them…” she gave a dismissive wave of her arm. Schillerz thought about this for a while and then realized she had revealed more about herself that about her father, who up till now had been the far more interesting figure. Yet things he had learned, which might have alienated him a day or two ago, now only endeared him more. They drew closer, and started another epic session of passionate lovemaking. When it was over, and he was feeling that dozy feeling that was becoming pleasantly familiar, she looked at her watch and realized her father had to be given his medication. “I’d better go down and get the dinner”, she said. Schillerz offered help but was placated by a kiss on the cheek.
He wanted to get up and read some more but found the soft, comfortable sheets and the warm, fluffy, pillow exerting a Newtonian force that drew him imexorably downward. He drifted into a reverie where he thought about how his encounter with Tom might go later on, if you can call the sort of frenzied cognition that went on in his head a reverie. Whatever he was going through, it soon metamorphosised into sleep, which he needed now less than any point since our story began, but I guess he didn’t know that in Irish physics there’s a law called Murphy’s Law.

Instead of thinking rationally, soberly about what he would say to Tom, he found himself in a courtroom. He was in the dock, being examined by a bewigged Tom. The jury all looked like Siobhan, the judge was unrecognizable behind a thick wig which covered most of his face. Tom ambled up to him, scratching his chin contemplatively. He looked over to the jury, asked “Mr. Hermann Schilerz, could you tell these gentle people of the jury what sort of person you are?” He was a bit taken aback, both that tom knew his real name and asked him such a vague question. He could only reply, “I suppose I’m a decent sort, loyal, obedient, honest.” Tom made a circle with his chin, disconcertingly vulture-like in it’s suddenness and rapidity. “And you consider these qualities around which you base your life, no matter what the consequences?” Schillerz could see where he was going with this line of questioning, and with beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead, gulped a muted “yes”. Tom put his hand up to his ear, asked, “I’m sorry, would you like to repeat this answer to the court?” He did so. “So”, Tom continued, “when you were asked to join the National Socialist German Workers Party in 1934, what did you do?” Now perspiring more intensely, he replied “I joined.” “I see”, responded Tom. “And were you aware at this time of the racist, anti-semitist, militaristic policies of the party?” Sensing a need to defend himself against this line of questioning, he said, “Yes, but….” Tom, who by now was so animated that he had to hold his wig in place, almost shouted “Please Mr. Schillerz, just answer the question.” He answered a simple yes, to which Tom nodded, before making a request to call some more witnesses.
They staggered in with their heads facing down towards the ground, disheveled, forlorn, wearing their pain and suffering on their eyes and foreheads as they wore their scraggly beards on their chins. When the approached the bar, Tom asked them in a quieter, more placatory tone, one by one if they recognized Schillerz. Each in turn said yes. He then asked them collectively how they had met. Suddenly they erupted into rage. Among the fragments of screeching, vociferous speech he caught were accusations of reporting them to the SS, assault, theft, public humiliation. Then he heard one point to him, and said, “Revenge, my brothers!” They climbed up into the dock, pulled him down and started to attack him, and this kept going till a dark shadow was cast over them and they all looked up. A voice, stentorian yet mellow, said, “Gentlemen, please, if you resort to this sort of violence you drag yourselves down to this man’s level. And how do you know he has not changed since he committed these alleged acts?” They all drifted away, he looked up to the face of the man who made these remarks. He took off his judges wig and revealed his own identity. It was Schillerz himself.

Betcha didn’t see that one coming.
He woke, found the sheets which an hour or so ago had felt so comfortable, strewn around him. This time he didn’t spend too much time wondering about then meaning of this dream, just lamented the paucity of his imagination. Why could his subconscious not generate something more original than this? Perhaps he should have spent more time in his youth reading books than watching movies. It wasn’t too late to make amends, he reckoned. In the meantime, a sweet, pungent smell was coming from the kitchen. He walked downstairs, the smell getting stronger all the time. He entered the kitchen, where tom was sitting down reading the newspaper and Siobhan was just putting the finishing touches on the dinner.
Looking up from behind the newspaper, Tom said, “Hey, Patrick, you’re just in time for dinner” in a casual tone that gave no indication that they had discussed the things that Schillerz wanted to talk about. He looked over at Siobhan, who looked a little guilty and then he knew for certain that his concerns had not come up in conversation. “So” he said, improvising with as much dexterity as he was able to muster, “Siobhan tells me you used to be a spice trader.” “Yes, that’s true”, he replied, looking over at Siobhan, who remained engrossed in her cookery. “I suppose you must have been wondering where we got all these strange ingredients. What Siobhan is making right now is called jalfrazi. It comes from Kashmir, in Northern India. Beautiful, beautiful, place. Mountains that touch the sky and green valleys below that burst into flower in the spring… you must go there, if this blasted war ever finishes.” Sensing an opportunity to steer the conversation round his way, he asked, “Weren’t you in a war yourself, a revolution even?” “Yes”, he replied, becoming forlorn almost to the point of despair. “It was a war that I thought was worth fighting at the time, but now I realize how futile and pointless it all was” Trying to avoid the topic of the Anglo-Irish war, about which he was extremely ignorant, Schillerz asked, “Were you into mysticism at the time?” though this was hardly his strong epistemological suit either. Tom, though, grew a little more animated when responding to this question. “Well, yes, very much so, but at that time I was very much under the influence of the Gita. You know the Gita?” He paused just long enough to ascetain that the answer was negative, then went on, “It’s a wonderful work, full of wisdom, but so open to misinterpretation, especially by a younger man, which is what I was back then, I suppose. It basically says that we all have a Dharma, or what Western philosophers might call a métier, something that we were put on this earth to do. At that time I thought it was to fight for Irish freedom, but as you probably know we’re no freer now than we were when in was your age”. He stopped, looked a little melancholic again, gave Schillerz the chance to ask, “So what do you think your…” he gulped, tried unsuccessfully to pronounce the word Dharma, “is now?” Tom’s face again became more spirited, as he said, “Oh, for years and years I thought I could change things in other ways, through my writing, through politics. But in my latter years I’ve become more influenced by the Tao.” This time he didn’t even pause, just said, “it’s a book from the same general period…” he grimaced slightly, as if in recognition of what a ludicrous statement that was, “but it’s philosophy is completely different. It preaches harmony with nature, and acceptance of change and disorder, what we’d call stoicism here in Europe.” He paused. “At least that’s the way I understand it. Many scholars over the millennia have their own interpretations. Perhaps it’s just an interpretation that suits me personally. I guess every work is basically what other people make of it”.
Tentatively, like a mah-jong player touching the sick at the very bottom of the pile, Schillerz asked “So…” intending to feel his way into the subject of Tom’s putative powers of clairvoyance. He was interrupted by Siobhan serving dinner with a little more alacrity than people normally perform this task. Tom looked a bit surprised and remarked “Someone’s eager to serve dinner tonight”, with such an apparent lack of understanding of the reasons that Schillerz was left to wonder whether all this talk of clairvoyance was just pulling his leg, yanking his chain, a piece of chicanary or legerdemain or supercherie. He gave Siobhan a glance to try to gain some sort of closure on the issue, and was frustrated as she sat down calmly and started to break the naan bread. At times she could be just as enigmatic as her father. After about thirty seconds, though, she put his suffering to an end.
“Da”, she said.
“Yes, my sweet, my love, the apple of my eye, my heart of hearts, my penetralia mentis”, he said, breaking his own naan bread, watched carefully by Schillerz, who had not eaten this type of meal before.
Siobhan, trying not to look fazed by this display of affection, said gently, “I told Patrick certain things about you, and I may have exaggerated a little.”
“Oh yes, what manner of things, might I ask?”
“Well, you know that gift you have for, well, not reading people’s minds, exactly, but, y’know, telling certain things about people from the way they act and so on?”
“Oh, that. Don’t mind her, Patrick. She has a tendency to exaggerate these things.”
“So there is nothing there at all?” asked Schillerz, a note of worry creeping into his voice.
“Well, I’ve been told I have certain powers, but I’ve never really believed it myself. Why are you so eager to know, anyway?”
“I was hoping you could tell me some things about myself.”
“Things you don’t already know?”
“No, no… it’s just… I need to know if you know who I am, if you know what I mean.”
“I see”, he said, scratching his chin. “Well this is now place to discuss these things. Maybe we can go into the living room and talk about them there. But first let’s enjoy Siobhan’s excellent cooking. You know, in Kashmir, you can get this in something called a thali, where they keep filling your plate up until you’re completely full, and it only costs a couple of rupees. I remember one time…”
This was all Schillerz heard, as he drifted into a reverie of his own. He wondered what to make of Tom’s dismissive attitude, which could only indicate that he either knew everything or knew nothing. Peculiarly, he would feel better if he knew everything, as if he had it would indicate that he was safe, as surely, if he knew everything, he would have been reported by now. Or was he just setting a trap, trying to get him to admit who he was? He looked around the table, where Siobhan and Tom were indeed enjoying the meal just the way he had suggested. Yet her culinary charms culled from the exotic spices tom had acquired on his travels were lost on him on this particular occasion. He ate mechanically, as if he was in prison eating the most mundane gruel, or a pig guzzling putrid swill. If the allegedly clairvoyant one could not sense this, the cook certainly could, but was willing to make allowances. When she finished and took her plate to be washed, Tom raised his arm and said, “Ah, yeera leave it, we’ve got far more important things to discuss.” Though uttered casually and without malice, it sent a shudder down Schillerz’ spine.
Tom led the way into the living room. Though nearer to the door, Schillerz let Siobhan out first, with a sort of chivalry that would have endeared him to a woman of more conservative instincts. As if preparing for some sort of religious ritual, tom closed all the shutters. While his back was turned, Schillerz gave Siobhan an inquisitive look, but her response was a mere shrug. When the room was darkened, he took out some candles, placed them in the center of the room, and lit them. Then he opened a drawer, took out some incense sticks, also lit them, and placed ashtrays under them, saying, with apparent equanimity, “I got these in Mysore, in Southern India, years and years ago, outside the palace. They still smell as pungent was they did the day I got them.” The smell was not one Schillerz recognized, neither resembling the natural floral smells of his native Bavaria or the noxious urban odours of the cities which he had visited. It was a smell which almost brought tears to his eyes as if he had been peeling onions, but sweet and beguiling at the same time. Then Tom opened up another drawer, where there was a pipe, some tobacco, and some small brown cubes that he failed to recognize. Tom and Siobhan sat around the candles and beckoned Schillerz to join them. Watching Siobahn, he could only conclude that she was familiar with this ritual in spite of her professed ignorance. Schillerz could only watch Tom prepare the brown cubes for about thirty seconds before his curiousity got the better of him.
“So, um what are you doing right now?”
While Siobhan merely giggled gently, Tom laughed aloud, not out of condescenscion but of genuine surpise. “Don’t you know, really?” he asked, before answering himself with a “No, I suppose it’s possible you may not. This is something else I bring back from my travels to India, where people still use it in there religious rituals. We used to use similar substances here, but then Christianity came along, and, well, I guess you know the rest.” Looking over at the perplexed face of Schillerz, he gathered that he still hadn’t quite got the picture. “This is marijuana, Patrick, that I got from a very wise Sadhu in the Indian Himalayas. It helps focus my mind when I’m I’m doing what I’m about to do. You can try some if you want, but it’s up to you.” Schillerz was shocked by his casual attitude to what he was brought up to believe was an extremely dangerous drug. He had heard all the warnings as a young teenager, how it would turn him into one of those long-haired slackers that got dragged off to labour camps to instill some disciple into them, how it would impair his vision and his perception, and clarity of thought, turn him from an upright teuton into a shambling, incoherent slav. To see someone who was obviously an intellectual partake of it was thus extremely disorientating. Yet his curiousity was also aroused. He wanted to observe the effects it would have on Tom first, and then think about trying some himself, but did not want to say this. With a guile that was hardly Machiavellian but impressive by his own standards, he said, I’d like to hear what you have to say about me first. Tom nodded, stuffed the last bit of tobacco into the pipe, lit it, took a draw, and then handed it to Siobhan. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then looked over at Schillerz and said, “so, you want to know where I think you come from, what your background is, and why you are here, is that so?” Schillerz gulped with the realisation that the moment of truth was about to arrive, and in his adrenaline rush failed to notice the effects of the narcotic on Tom, just gulped an affirmative response.
Tom closed his eyes, asked, “Ready?”
Schillerz nodded, then noticed that his eyes were still closed, and said “yes”.
“Okay, let me see. You’re not really from Dublin, are you?”
Schillerz shook his head.
“In fact, you’re not even from Ireland, are you?”
Schillerz, with an increasing sense of where this was going, again shook his head.
Tom scratched his beard. Let me see. You’re not from this country, you come here during wartime, land in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and stay here for three days. You’re young, of conscriptable age. So, either you come from a rich, influential family who’ve been able to get you out of the war, you’re from a neutral country like Switzerland, or you’re an enemy spy.”
Schillerz was a little disappointed that what Siobhan had built up to be powers of clairvoyance were really just intuition and strong reasoning ability, or so it seemed. He looked first at Siobhan, to see what her reaction was, but her was as lapidary as a poker player’s.
“So”, Schillerz asked, “Which do you think it is?”
Tom scratched his beard, and said, “Well, you know, there’s a principle in logic called Occam’s Razor that says that the simplest explanation must always be the right one. But in this case I’m not so sure. The thing is, you’ve just admitted you’ve been lying to me for the past three days. And you seem to have a natural inquisitiveness about you, coupled with an apparent need for discipline and order. Plus, though you speak English excellently, there’s an ever so slight vestigial German accent that creeps through now and again. So I’d have to say that it’s quite possible you’re a German spy.”
At this instant the expressions on the faces of Siobhan and Schillerz seemed to swap, Schillerz becoming poker-faced and Siobhan breaking out into a fit of coughing. Tom put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Steady on my dear, I’m not finished yet.” He took the pipe from Siobhan’s hand and had another drag. “I get the impression that before you came here, you were a loyal Nazi. Then, with the shock of the events that led you here, you started to have doubts, doubts which haven’t been fully resolved. You started to lust after my daughter and thought that if you admitted who you were you might lose her. You were afraid to radio home in case you thought we might hear you. So now you really don’t know what to do.” He paused, looked at the stunned face of his daughter and the quivering face of Schillerz and asked, “Am I right?”
Schillerz asked if he could have the pipe and Tom handed it to him. He took a drag, coughed slightly, then took a deep breath and said, “how do you know all this?”
“I didn’t”, he replied, “Just conjecture. So, how close was I?”
As he answered, his colour perception was starting to be ameliorated. The candlelight took on a sharper hue and seemed to illuminate everything in a scarlet haze. “Amazingly close. Almost exactly right in every detail, in fact.”
“So, how does it feel to have all these things out in the open?”
“Good, I suppose. It hasn’t really sunk in yet. But, tell me, why didn’t you report me?”
“Well, we weren’t sure that you were a Nazi. And even if you were, it seems unfair to us that you spend the rest of the next four years in prison, just for being a conformist. If that were the case, the whole population of this country would be in jail.”
“Four years?”, he asked, getting a little sidetracked, “why do you say that?”
“That’s about how long this war will last, I reckon.” He looked disappointed that his apothegm about conformity had not been appreciated.
“So, why do you say that?”, he asked, his tone becoming more and more languorous.
“Oh, well, the last one lasted four, this one, maybe five, six years.” He looked over at Schillerz to see if he could tell how facetious he was being, yet he merely looked blissful. Though he knew none of it would be really assimilated, he gave a pretty long account of how he thought the war would go, peppered with references to Clauswitz, Thucydides, Machiavalli and other figures from the past who rung at most a distant churchbell in Schillerz’ mind. Schillerz merely looked back at him, his eyes growing heavier with each draw from the pipe. Finally, when he got to the end of his predictions, which didn’t involve any a-bombs, he asked Schillerz what he planned to do for the rest of the conflict.
He stuttered and hummed and hawed for a while, conscious that his grasp of English was momentarily disimproving. “I don’t know, like two days ago I would have radioed home and awaited instructions but now… it’s like, what would the point be, like how many people did you say will die, 30, 40 million, it’s like, how can I make a difference, when nearly all the…” he fumbled around, looking, with eventual success, for the word “casualties” “will be in Russia, in Asia, it’s just a sideshow, man, I’m like nothing. I may as well stay here and shag your daughter, man.” Tom and Siobhan both gave an indulgent nod at this last remark, Tom reflecting that it was he who chose to introduce Schillerz to marijuana just now.
“Well, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, though there’s some things we need to work out. I suppose we can be more open with each other in future.”
“Yeah, right, open, that’s good. Brothers, man. Tell you what, you are a truly remarkable man, and you have a truly wonderful daughter.” He stretched out his arms and gave them both as hug, which they accepted with the most tenuous acquiescence.
He drew back, slouched into a position where he bore most of his weight on one elbow. “So”, he asked, “Are all people in Ireland like you?”
Tom looked a little quizzical and asked, “Like what?”
“Like, y’know, tolerant, easy-going, accepting of others”
Siobhan giggled, the way a pubescent girl would at one of her peers who doesn’t know the facts of life yet. Tom laughed gently, conscious that his reaction might seem a condescending one. He chose to answer the question interrogatively.
“Well, tell us, how many Irish people did you meet before you came here?”
“Oh, um, just a handful I guess”,
“And what were your impressions of them”
“Well, uh, it varies, I guess. The first person I met seemed freindly enough until I told him where I was going...”
“Which was?”
“Uh, the local IRA cell, but when I told him I was going there he got really suspicious and distant”. He paused a little, wondered if he was going off on a tangent by asking: “Can you tell me why this should be so?”
Tom scratched his beard, knowing he would be no more likely to assimilate a detailed answer than he was to take in his predictions about the rest of the war. Instead he gave the sort of cryptic, generalised, answer that he knew someone hoking weed for the first time might aprreciate.
“All revolutions end with the restoration of the existing order, and the one we had, alas”, he said with a sigh, “was no different”. “But tell us”, he offered, knowing as he did how those as strongly under the influence as Schillerz was right now like the sound of their own voices more than those of anyone else, “How many others did you meet?”
“Just the people in the IRA camp in Ball... Ballan... Ball...”
“Ballanasaoirse”, Tom helped out, adding, “How in the name of God did you manage to ask for directions there, and for that matter, how did you get into the country in the first place? By U-boat?”
“No, I parachuted.”
Siobhan responded with the look of wide-eyed wonder that young people have for a concept as new as human flight was then, Tom with a stoical look that acknowledged that he was never going to have this experience himself.
“So, what’s it like up there? What does it feel like? What does the world look like from the sky?”
He took a deep breath, the way one does before going into a dope spiel. “It’s like, you’re way up there, and there’s all these little puffy clouds and stuff, and you can see all the little fields and houses, just like on an OS map, and then you reach the sea and it’s so vast and you feel so small and insignificant...” The teutonic drawl came back into his voice a little as he pronounced this word, then he started to drift: “Do you ever get this feeling, like you don’t matter at all, like the world is so big, like all the world wants to make things hard for you, like your mother and your father and your teachers and, and...”
Tom gave Siobhan the are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking look and recieved a nod of assent in response. Schillerz response was predictable to them but frightening none the less.
“Vhy do you give each other ziss look?”, he demanded, his German accent coming back thicker than ever.
Tom, who wasn’t without experience in dealing with these situations, pressed his hands downwards gently and asked Schillerz to be calm. “Okay, Patrick”, he averred, suddenly realising that he didn’t know the real name of his interlocutor, “It’s quite common for people to have this reaction to this drug the first time they take it. Don’t worry, it’ll pass”.
Schillerz, at this present moment was going to have none of this. “Don’t fucking patronise me!”, he shouted, revealing a side of him that shocked Siobhan as much as her difficult side shocked him. He then got up, staggering slightly, then pointed his finger at Tom and said, you’re going to report me! I know you are! Schweinhund!” He then stormed out of the door, followed by Siobhan, who at first ignored Tom’s admonitions to leave him go. He ran out towards the front door, thrusting Siobhan aside as he did so. He exited the front door, ran out, followed for a while by Siobhan, who after a minute or two realised it would be futile to try and stop him. She came back in the door, puffing and panting, and fell into the arms of her father.
“Oh, da”, she asked, “What have we done?”
He put his arms around her, said, “I’ve known people ro have instaneneous paranoid episodes on hash before, oh there was this one in India...” he realised she wouldn’t want to hear the details of this particular anecdote, “...but he was just fine after a while.”
“Oh, da, are yeh sure?”
He observed the look in her eyes and asked, “you really like him, don’t you?”
Her eyes started to well up with tears. “Oh, da, I’ve never met anyone like him before. He’s so innocent, and so naive, and so gentle, and so...”, she gave him a look that indicated what other facet of her being Schillerz existence was able to gratify, unambigously, yet without seeming lewd. “Are yeh sure he’ll return?”
“He’ll be back”
He paused, for no reason that seemed appropriate to himself, and added, “After all, where would he go? To the guards? I don’t think so. He’ll pass out in a few minutes and after that he’ll return. C’mon, let’s go and get some hot chocolate ready for when he does. He could easily catch a chill out there, though he won’t feel it until he returns.” He thought for a while, and asked, “You did milk the cow today, didn’t you?” She nodded, he went into the living room, she to the kitchen.
She came back in a few minutes with two cups of steaming hot chocolate. By then Tom had put on a record, a Duke Elligton LP he had bought on his last trip to Dublin. Siobhan handed him the cup, sat down, and remarked, “You know, he never even told us his real name.”
Tom laughed gently and acknowledged that this was the case. For a few minutes they warded off their fears about schillerz by guessing what his name might be. After a while the mellow music, the fire, the hot chocolate and the dope combined to send them both into a slumber. They were both still asleep when they heard a knock on the door about an hour later. Tom looked over at Siobhan to ask her to open the door, fairly sure it would be an apologetic Schillerz out there. He went over to the turntable to turn over the record which had been producing a soporific scratching sound for a while. When Siobhan was confronted with the dishevelled face of Schillerz, his hair glistening with the soft drizzle that had started to fall while she dozed peacefully, bits of vomit still sticking to his stubble, ostensibly incapable of any form of speech, she could think of no response but to embrace him and lead him into the living room. He acquiesced, still silent but for the squelching noise his boots made and the gentle absorption of water by his clothes. When he got into the living room, Tom was still dusting the LP, he turned round and, sounding mildly shocked, asked, “Lord God, Patrick, you look awful, come in, sit down, listen to some music, and we’ll help you get cleaned up.”
“I’m sorry”, was his contrite, tremulous response, “I don’t know what came over me.”
Trying not to look ironic, he replied, “I think I do.”
“You do?”, he asked, trying not to look too surprised.
“Well, yes. A lot of people have a bad reaction to marijuana the first time they try it, though usually it doesn’t come until afterwards. I’m a little surprised at the intensity of your reaction, though. If I thought this would happen, I’d never have given you the pipe in the first place. I hope you’re not too angry with me.”
“No”, he replied after a contemplative pause. “I owe you much, you’ve been so tolerant with me, you’ve made me see things differently... I’m forever in your debt.”
A tad embarrassed by this expression of gratitude, Tom was for once lost for words. The ensuing awkward silence was fortunately punctuated by the entry of Siobhan, bearing some clean clothes, a cloth and towel, and some hot chocolate, and act that Tom felt, somewhat embarrassly, was far more worthy of gratitude, which was rewarded by a soft kiss on the lips. He then said, “Well, I’d better go upstairs and change into these clothes.” Tom gave his by now familiar wave of the arm and said, “Not all at. Sure ‘tis freezing cold up there. You can get changed down here, where ‘tis warm, and tell us what happened, and listen to the music.”
“Are you sure it won’t be embarrassing for you?”
“ Sure why would it be? I know what an unclothed man looks like, so does Siobhan. What’s the problem?”
In his current state he was unwilling to dwell on the issue, so Tom’s argument seemed logical enough. He started to wipe the vomit and to dry his face and hair. As he did, at one stage it looked tossed enough to give him a feral, atavistic appearence that endeared him more to Siobhan. As he started to unbutton his shirt, Tom, sounding totally unfazed, asked, “So, tell us what happened. Oh, but first, you must tell us what your real name is, assuming you’re not really called Patrick.
“No, my name is Schillerz, Hermann Schillerz” He thought about offering his hand as one generally does on these occasions but decided that it would not be appropriate.
“So”, replied Tom, seemingly enchanted, “Schillerz, like Schiller, the poet, and Hermann, like Hermes, the messenger of the Gods.”
Thinking better of making any mention of Goering, he nodded and laughed politely.
“So, would it be Okay if we called you Hermes? I kind of like the sound of it.” Siobhan nodded in agreement.
“Yeah”, he said, sounding comfortable once again, as he started to unlace his boots, “Why not?”
“So, Hermes, what happened out there, Oh, but...” he interrupted himself, as a person of so many facets is often wont to do, “Have you ever actually read anything by Schiller?”
Looking a little contrite again, he shook his head, an act which seemed in itself to send Tom rushing over to one of his many bookshelves. “I have a dual language edition of his lyric poems...”, he ran his finger along a particular bookshelf and then said “here”, took it off the shelf, and placed it in Schillerz’ hand, saying, “Read this whenever you get the chance.” He then paused, and added, “Some of the people you met last week could recite the names of many of the great heroes of Irish literature, but might not have read any of their works either. But anyway, tell us, what was it like out there?”
“Oh, my lord”, he started out, returning, much to the satisfaction of Tom and Siobhan to an Irish idiom, “It was really bad. I really thought you were going to turn me in. Then, as I was walking through the fields, I started thinking there were people hidden in the bushes, who were out to get me as well. Then, as you can see, I started to vomit. I couldn’t stand up, I had to lie down, in the damp grass. Then it started raining... what do you call this type of rain?” “Drizzle”, replied Tom, not thinking it worthwhile to tell him how many different words there were in Irish for rain. “Yes, the drizzle started to come down. Maybe it was that that cooled me off, as you might say. I Started to think about all you had done for me, how good you had been, and that there was nowhere to escape to, even if I wanted to. So there was nothing left for me to do but return.” He paused a while, then asked, “What is this music? Is it the “Jazz” that comes from America?”
“Not just any jazz, Hermes”, he replied, causing an almost imperceptible rictus on siobhan’s face. “This is the King of Jazz, or the Duke, if you will.” Seeing the blank expression on Schillerz’ face, he clarified: “Duke Ellington.” Schillerz looked a little perplexed, in the way that always charmed Siobhan. “How can he be a Duke, if he comes from the United States, which is a republic?”
“It’s just a name, silly”, said Siobhan, the look of endearment still fixed on her face.
Schillerz’ face went away from perplexity but didn’t quite make it all the way to resolution. “So, it is considered Alright to listen to this music here?”
“Well”, averred Tom, looking as pensive as he always did when making such a consideration, “it depends on what you mean by `here’. Many people here in Ireland consider this music decadent, lewd, provocative as well.” He stopped for a while, let the Duke’s mellow cadences caress his ears, and thought of how absurd such a viewpoint was, then added, “Around here you can only get the sanitised, anglised version played by Bing Crosby. We had to go all the way up to Dublin to get this. It’s like the version of the German musical tradition you get back home, if I’m correctly informed. They play lots of Lehar and Johann Strauss, am I right?”
“Yes, fairly much.”
“Yes, I thought so. Nothing too challenging, after all, you’ve got a war to win, you don’t want your people getting all confused, do you?”
All at once Schillerz saw how bogus the argument for always playing “uplifting” music was.
“Actually, ‘tis the same with our own music. It’s like what was said of McPherson, the original Celtic renaissance man: `He took the wild Irish song and turned it into a musical snuff-box.”
Schillerz didn’t quite understand all of that, but Tom saw that he got the general gist of it.
“D’you know, Tacitus, the ancient Roman historian used to consider both of our races as “freedom-loving” peoples”, continued Tom, adding, in a more reflective tone, with a certain amount of unease provoked by his uncertainty as to where exactly Schillerz stood politically now, “Which is ironic in the view of the sort of regimes we have in our countries now.”
“Why do you say that”, asked Schillerz, seeming confused, “I was always led to believe that we had totally different systems of government in our countries.”
“Well, that’s why the term “military intelligence” is such an oxymoron, or a contradiction in terms.” He added the second term after the first had failed to provoke any glimmer of recognition. “This country is nominally democratic, of course, but the real power lies with the church, which is in a similar position to the wehrmacht in your Weimar period, and by large landowners, who resemble the pre-war Prussian junkers.” As Schillerz marvelled at his interlocutor’s grasp of his own country’s history, Tom could only ponder on the fact that the last war might not be the war anymore.
Sensing that, though he had said nothing in response, Schillerz was fascinated by this line of argument, he went on: “If the social and economic forces were just a little more simaler, for example we had more industry and a bigger army, with more urbanistion, there might have been a theocratic counter-revolution, as there was in Spain.”
Before Schillerz could tell of his recollections of the Spanish Civil War, the planes flying over house on the way to Morocco to bring moors to fight for the Pope in Spain, the sabre-rattling form Hitler and Mussolini, and the sense of imminent broader conflict in the air, Tom was continuing. He thought that to interrupt him when he was in full flow was like Achilles trying to stop the flow of the river, and there was something effluvial about his spiels, something of Molly Bloom or Anna Livia, though no-one would ever build a fountain in his honour which would fill up with heroin vials.
“Sure didn’t it come close enough to happening in ‘32, with that fucking buffoon O’ Duffy? Those were scary times, I thought it was only a matter of time before some Blueshirts broke into my house and burned my library to shreds. I should have known better though, that fascism is essentially a mass movement and the mass of people in this country would never get together in big enough numbers to oust a government that was already theocratic and jingoistic enough for most of them.”
Seeing that Schillerz was not that au fait with this episode in Irish History, Tom told him the whole sordid story of the blueshirts, their demogic leader, their ill-fated march on Dublin, their half-assed ideology with it’s pot-pourri of ethics drawn from Nazism and Italian fascismo. It bored Siobhan, who knew the story already, but fascinated Schillerz, who started to realise that maybe his country’s fate was less a result of manifest destiny as more as an outcome of aleatory historical events, and suggested this to Tom, who responded to this gauntlet-throwing with elan.
“Oh, indeed. In the early thirties is was touch and go as to whether the US stayed “Democratic” or went fascist or communist. Of course, if it had, either of those outcomes would have been seen as inevitable. The winners write the history books, and often have to burn the old ones if they don’t conform with their version of events. In a way, that happened here in ‘22 when Rory O’ Connor blew up the national archives. Of course, it’s seen as a patriotic act of of defiance, not an act of cultural vandalism. That was the moment, actually, when I gave up the whole fight for Irish nationalism, though the doubts had been creeping in for some time, ever since ‘16.
Seeing the look of fascination combined with confusion on Schillerz’ face that would lead to another lengthy exegisis, Siobhan got up, giving the wish to have another cup of hot chocolate as her excuse. It wasn’t that she wasn’t interested in all this politics stuff that the men were talking about, though it could easily have looked that way. Tom nodded assent in a way that was so desultory that a less perceptive young woman might have missed it. Tom went on to explain his role in the 1916 uprising, how Roger Casement had smuggled arms from Schillerz’ country, how they had almost taken back the country and set up a republic. He spoke of his pain when James Connoly, the idealogue, the intellectual, the bibliophile who had been all over the world giving lectures on the exploitation of the Irish prolitariat was killed and he knew that the revolution would be taken over by the man whose name he could hardly pronounce without sneering, the man who was now “Taoiseach”, a bogus enough term in itself, but he would get to that later.
“He isn’t even fucking Irish, just as Hitler isn’t even German. So our country is being led by a leader who perpetuates a wildly misinterpreted version of Irish Traditions, and a church which perverts the views of it’s own founder, and landords who got where they were by licking the asses of the so-called `oppresor’.” Though he was a man with an acute sense of irony, it was impossible not to notice a trace of genuine anger creeping into his voice. He saw that Schillerz noticed this, an apoligised, though even his anger, as if he was some Celtic Shamen or Himalyan Yogi, enlightened Schillerz, who all of a sudden could see how spurious his ex-fuehrer’s rants were, and how genuine anger never tries to draw attention to itself.
“There’s no need to apologise. I can see why you are angry. I’m starting to get a little angry about my own country.”
“Well, console yourself, ‘cause when this terrible war is over, your country will be reborn in a new image, peaceful, stable, democratic, though some of the bruises may never heal. But this country may be condemned to another 40 or 50 years of theocracy.”
Looking perplexed, Schillerz asked how this could be so.
“Well, after the war fascism will be so demonised as an ideology that any country that’s even nominally democratic will be allowed by the new world order that emerges to stay exactly as it is. So change will have to come from within ourselves, and it’s a long and arduous journey that faces us.”
Feeling that Tom may be exaggerating a bit, Schillerz asked, “Surely things are not that bad here. You are allowed to have all these books, and all these records, you have been allowed to travel, to make enough money to live this way, surely things aren’t that bad.”
“No, not for us, it has to be admitted. But we’re different. We’re lucky. Most people in this country live extremely badly. When the goverment blame the British for centuries of misrule, they aren’t entirely off the mark, but the economic policies of the two governments have been a disaster. If there had been more class consciousness we might have a government that could create some social equity. But our geographical position put paid to that hope.”
When asked by Schillerz to explain this statement, he went off into one of his tangents about how geography affects history. Starting off with how Ireland’s island status was our undoing, he broadened the scope of his argument by pointing to the scoriacious world map on his wall, a map which he now reflected, was out of date, and showed how the east-west axis of Eurasia allowed it to develop quicker than Africa or the Americas. He showed, to a rapt Schillerz, how all the worlds religions had emerged at much the same time, along the same line of latitude, in tandem with agriculture. Then he explained the heartland theory, which diminished Schillerz’ view of his country’s leadership even more.
Then he went back to explaining how Ireland’s history had been determined by the endless conflict with England, and reflected on another major irony.
“When the United Kingdom becomes a permissive society, as history shows it must, Catholics in the North will start to agitate for more social equity, this will lead to a resurgence in support for the IRA. This will allow the British to portray our race as violent thugs, though the conflict that ensues will be a result will have been caused by their rapacious imperialism. Similarly, to win the war against your country, the British and Americans will bomb your cities to the ground, even some non-industrial cities, they will even bomb their own allies if it makes tactical sense. Yet it’s your people who will always be seen as violent, though You lost the war.”
Unaware of how accurate this prediction would turn out to be, Schillerz asked how he could prognosticate all this with such certainty.
“The British are a cunning, Machiavellian race. They know that what they face can scare their people so much that any measures can be invoked to defeat it. In the past, they’ve used pscycological warfare by destroying their opponents culture as well as economy, in India as much as here. So don’t be too surprised to see Dresden or Vienna bombed to the ground. The US aren’t that different, and they will join the war before too long.”
Looking aghast, Schillerz baulked at this idea. “But we were always told that the US was decadent, isolationist, that they were too comfortable in their vacuous hedonism to ever send their young men to be killed.”
Struck by his naivete, Tom said, “Yes, but this is exactly what they want you to think. This is why they have flooded your market with films that project that image. Secretly, they’re preparing their industries for a war with your nation.”
Schillerz didn’t know if his head was spinning more as a result of the dope or Tom’s mercurial mind.
“So what about that other stuff, about the North of Ireland?”
“Well, it’s our Sudetenland. Except we don’t have a huge army to intimidate the unionists, so we’ll have to use the only tactic available to us, which is guerilla warfare.” He paused a second to reflect on a certain irony. “That’s fairly much the reason why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Schillerz nodded and said yes, he supposed it was.
“I guess you heard the same simplifications about the situation up there as you did about everything else. D’you know, it’s ironic, but you probably have more in common with the Loyalists up there than you do with the IRA down here.”
“Really?”, asked Schillerz, sounding shocked.
“Oh, Indeed”, said Tom, who hadn’t realized what a bombshell this would be. “They’re ultra-conservative, pro-protestant work-ethic, believe in maintaining the established order, believe in a seriously flawed theory of racial supremacy, and they march all over the fucking place every chance they get.”
“But… the national socialists don’t think of themselves as being conservative.”
“Oh, no”, replied Tom, the merest hint of sarcasm creeping into his voice. They’re building a “new” Germany backed by the old wehrmacht and the old industrialists and the old landowners, mobilizing the working classes against foreign enemies like the old Kaiser did. They rally against modernity yet utilize it to promote their archaic ideology, with radio, cinema, and this new invention they have, television.”
Relishing this chance to become more proactive in the conversation, Schillerz blurted out, “I saw television once, in a café in Munich.”
“Really”, tom replied, more out of politeness than interest, “What was it like?”
“Like a cinema, only much smaller. I can’t ever see it becoming very popular.”
“So what sorts of things were being broadcast?”
“Same things that are on the radio, reports of rallies, of the building of weaponry, of rearmament.”
“You see”, he said, his digust manifested in a violent shaking of his head, “this is what I mean about every revolution leading to the restoration of the existing order. A totally revolutionary invention comes along and the established order use it as a crude propaganda tool. I hate to think what things will be like when they become so affordable that everybody has one.”
For once, Schillerz reasoned, Tom’s powers of prognostication were letting him down. The idea that everybody would one day have a miniature cinema in their house was surely way off the mark. He decided to bring the conversation back to another subject that Tom had raised. “So what is this ‘permissive society’ of which you speak?”
“Oh, Well” began another of Tom’s excited spiels, “When the war is over and millions of people are dead, people are going to start asking what is was all for, and they’re going to decide that it was to create a more open, equitable society where people are free to do whatever they want, sort of. Just the opposite of Nazism,basically.”
“So you think Ireland will become more equitable and free-spirited one day?”
“One day, yes, but not at the same time as everybody else”
“Why do you say that?”
Schillerz recognised the look on tom’s face when he was given the chance to expostualate on one of his pet theories.
“Oh, well, it’s a contention of mine that Ireland always moves in the oppposite direction to the rest of Western Civilisation, since the Celts came here, if not before. Y’see, When the Romans were building monuments that have lasted two millenia, and touch wood, will outlive this present conflagration, the Celts here had a culture that was almost entirely transient, based around music and storytelling. Then when Rome fell, it was left to Irish monks to keep civilisation going, when the rest of Europe was plunged into the so-called Dark Ages. Of course, then as now, those scholars weren’t appreciated. There was John Scotus Erigena, bless him, feted at the court of Charlemange, but stabbed to death with the pencils of his own students. Anyway, then came the Middle Ages, when Europeans looked for new worlds but the leadership in Ireland never left the so-called `pale’. Then there was the Renaissance, when ancient learning was revived everywhere else but started to die here. Then the Seventeenth Century, when the religous wars ended on the continent but started here. Then the Enlightenment, when a whole new world of learning was brought into being but the language of our ancestors started it’s long, slow, painful decline. Then the Nineteenth Century, when the proletariat in indudtrialised countries slaved for sixteen hours a day but here settled into a sedate agrarian subsistence. And now, when the world fights a war of vastly conflicting ideologies, we remain neutral. So in twenty years time, when the permissive society comes about, Ireland will probably still be banning innocuous books like The Tailor and the Ansty and virtually imprisoning unmarried mothers.”
With those last words Tom’s tom’s intellectual vitality faded into a frustrated weltschmerz, while Schillerz, who thought he had become desensitised to shocks of this sort, merely gasped.
“You imprison umarried mothers here?”, he asked, as soon as he could get his breath back. This was not the sort of thing he imagined happening in a democarcy.
The ennui in Tom’s voice rapidly gave way to a biting sarcasm. “Oh, no, Hermes. We don’t imprison them. We Save Their Souls. We give them the benefit of good, decent hard work to help them reform.” If Tom had been aware of the phrase Arbeit macht frei at this point he would surely have mentioned it. Schillerz, struggling to get his head round this latest revelation, could only ask, “Well, what happens the children?”
“They get put into so-called `industrial schools’, places of almost unimaginable brutality, where they are violated in far worse ways than their parents were.”
“Gott in Himmel”, he exclaimed, looking at Tom’s face to ensure he knew what this meant. “Does everybody know about these places?”
“Oh yes, very much so. many parents threaten to send their kids there if they misbehave. The children from one of these schools even play music at the start of the biggest sporting event in the country. A little like the ways slaves were paraded at the Coluseum, except that the enemy we claim to have vanquished is immorality.”
“And everyone agrees with this system?”
Knowing that this question could not be answered as simply, Tom scratched his beard and said, “Well, you must understand, the Church has tremendous power here, as, for such a long time, religion and ethic identity have been conflated here. The church hold a similar position to the Wehrmact in Germany. Anyone who wants to maintain power has to reach some sort of modus vivendi with them. And they provide spectacle, ceremonies which brighten the often dismal lives of people who live in extreme poverty.”
Schillerz thought of the kids he had seen in the town in their little wedding costumes and things started to click into place.
“So you think these things might change eventually?”
“There are many who believe it would be a bad thing if they did”, Tom observed wryly, “as for them our race are such a bunch of racous, dirty peasants that we need the guidance of Mother Church to prevent us from degenerating bag into the bog-trotters from which we desended. But it’s my most cherished wish that people here will eventually be able to believe whatever they want. It’s what the hope of salvation is to a pious Christian, or future social equity to a Marxist.”
“So”, asked Schillerz, almost having to press both hands against his head to keep it from spinning, “What was it you were saying about books being banned? You don’t have book burnings here, surely?”
“There’s a passage in one of the banned books that’s quite apposite, where someone says that Ireland never persecuted the Jews, because we never let them in. But just as there are a couple of thousand semites here, a few dirty books slip through the censors net as well. Like this one.” He reached over to the shelf and picked up an original Shakespeare & Co. edition of Ulysses. Thinking it a work of classical literature, Schillerz asked what the censors could possibly find to ban in it.
“This isn’t by Homer, it’s by James Joyce. It’s a howl against the void, it’s a life-affirming masterpiece, it’s a feast of verbal pyrotechnics. It’s the apotheosis of the novelists art, the standard against which all other novels will one day be judged. And it’s a fucking great laugh, for anyone willing to make the investment required to read it. Yet we ban it, because there’s a few references to things that everybody does almost every day. So a novelist whom we should celebrate is forced to live in exile, like a fucking leper. But one day he’ll be rehabilitated, his face on our currency, statues of his characters on the streets of our capital. Perhaps the school that his aunt built in Crosshaven might name a room after him.”
“Do you think I should read this?”, asked Schillerz.
“Well, let’s see how you get on with Candide first. How’s that going, by the way?”
“Quite well. This Pangloss is an interesting character. He reminds me of some of the teachers back home.”
“Ditto me. Panglossianism is as alive today as it was in Voltaire’s day. If Voltaire hadn’t invented him, someone else surely would have. We have a version of it in our country today, a belief that our political and church leaders know what’s best for us, even though entrusting them with power has only led to mass impoverishment. Yet their stranglehold on power is very hard to break.”
“So how do you think it will come about eventually?”
“Well, Hermes, technology can be a double-edged sword. Just as your leadership uses it to supress people, here it may eventually liberate them. I have high hopes for this television thing. I think it could dissemate ideas from around the world, shake us out of our petty insularity. There will be other inventions too, that will help to dissemate ideas, maybe even bring some prosperity to our sad little island.”
Seeing the bemused look on Schillerz face, he went on, “You see, we never really signed up fully to the whole protestant work ethic thing in this country. We preferred to live simple lives, growing our own food, making our own amusement with music and storytelling rather than craving possessions, the desire on which capitalism is based. The downside of this is that the few people who did have any entrepreneurial spirit, the despised gombeen-men sucked all the money out of the counrty and invested it abroad. In the future, however, money won’t be generated in the west by back-breaking labour, which will be delegated to far-flung Asian countries, but by harnassing information. And information is something we excell at. Our whole culture, our pre-Christain myths and legends were all based on narraitve, as was our music. This tradition continues today in our modernist novelists and out traditional seanochaois, in our parlimeantary orators and our pub philosophers. Just as ancient, pre-celtic Ireland was an entrepot for foreign traders, so in the future this island will be used to inform the world of products and sevices with machines that you or I could hardly concieve of. With luck, we may even steal a march by learning how to program these machines. So we might have some prosperity, if only for a few years. But this might not be such a good thing for the rest of the world.”
Looking a bit puzzled, Schillerz asked how this could be so.

“Well, remember what I said about Ireland always going the opposite way to the rest of civilisation? If this trend continues, the last thing the rest of the world should want is an Irish Renaisiance. Particularly as it may occur when western civilisation is at the summit of it’s power, at it’s most hubristic, when it can expand no more, though expansion is what it’s power is based upon.”
Schillerz wondered where Tom got these awesome powers of prognostication from. For the first time in his life he looked forward to being and old man, looking back on the following fifty or sixty years to see if Tom would prove a gifted Tiresias or an eccentric crank. Yet, paradoxically, after having one set of certainties stripped away, he felt an almost religous belief in the accuracy of these predictions.

3: Aurora

Then, suddenly, he thought of Siobhan, thought he should go up and see her. Wheter this was because he genuinely felt for her, or because his head was now so full of ideas that he would surely wake up the next morning, hold his hands and pray for rain, is something I’ll leave you to decide. In any event, he embraced Tom, an act that was more important to himself than to his embracee, who had be gratified enough by the rare chance to wax lyrical as he had just done, and told him he was going up to see the daughter of a truly amazing man.
Tom blushed a little as he was often wont to do, then turned around to stoke the fire to keep it going for another few minutes. Before Schillerz went up to see Siobhan, There was one thing still prickling his curiousity that he needed resolved.
What are those big brown things that you burn?”
“This is called turf. It’s like coal, but in an earlier stage of decomposition.”
“And you mine it here?”
“Oh no, it’s not buried deep enough to need to be mined. We just dig it straight out of the ground, then let all the water soak out of it, which takes a few months, then when it’s dry enough we burn it.”
At this point the story of the boy who cried wolf came into both of their heads. But when Tom continued: “It’s this god-awful war that forces us back into the ground, as it were. Like yourselves and your increasing dependence on potatoes and other root crops”, Schillerz suspected that he might be serious after all.
He left the room, feeling even dizzier, said “‘night”, Tom turned his head around, uttered a casual, affable, “and you”, unaware that his face was illuminated with an iridescent glow from the embers he breathed new life into.
Schillerz rushed up the stairs, whether out of eagerness to see Siobhan, from giddy cerebral inspiration, or from some atavistic desire for his corporeality to reeasert itself against his newly inspired intellect. He pushed open the door of Siobhan’s bedroom without thinking to knock, but found it empty. Then, having recovered a measure of patience, he went slowly into his own room, where he found Siobhan lying down on the bed, plainly not as eager ro see him as he was to see her. Sensing something amiss, he asked, “Is there something the matter?”
“No”, she said, in a voice stifled by a lugubrious apathy, “Why should there be?”
“Well, there’s no reason I ask, it’s just that you don’t seem as vivacious as...”
“As you are now?” she finished off the sentence he was unable to complete with a hint of sarcasm that stung Schillerz severly, then went on, “Well I’m sorry I can’t be the other half of your platonic wholeness, Hermes. I’m an indepenent entity with agency off my own.”
Seeing that he was a little taken aback by this remark, She added “You see, I’ve read a few books as well. I may not be the great intellect that my father is, and I may never be good enough for him, but Lord Jesus, it’s not like I haven’t tried.”
“I’m sorry”, responded Schillerz, sounding chastened in the way only a man can be by a woman. “It’s just that your father is such a brilliant man, he’s amde me think about so many different things in a whole new way.”
“Well Hermes”, she responded, unable to supress a slight smile at the mention of his new sobriquet this time, “I think I know what sort of man my father is at least as well as you do. And frankly, I’ve had it up to here”, pointing to her forehead” with hearing what a brilliant man he is.” “Really?” asked Schillerz, puzzled, as he had been under the impression that Tom had lived in splendid rural isolation, “Who have you heard this from?”
“Oh, every month or so he has a little soiree where he brings down writers, poets, journalists from The Irish Times and Dublin Opinion and they talk about aesthetics, politics, the same sort of stuff he’s been wowing you with, more than likely. The younger ones always look the most impressed, but the older ones will sit there with there looks of world-weary experience and pretend they’ve heard it all before. But every time, every fucking time one of them will take me to one side and say `You are so lucky to have such an amazing man for a father’ It’s just a matter of time before I say, well you come and live here, cook and clean for him, do all his shopping if you think he’s so fucking great. You put up with all his condesencion, his impossibly high standards and see how you fucking like it. It’ll probably never happen, of course. I’m too inhibited.” Just for a second, she wished she smoked as this would have been an optimum moment to take a long, fellatial drag of a cigarette.
After this tirade Schillerz felt the way a gifted farmer’s son does on his first weekend back from the university. He felt compelled to defend his new paedagoue with all the passion and intellectual resources at his disposal, however.
“How can you talk of him with such contempt? He has done so much for you, given you a beautiful home in a wonderful setting, with all these books and music, all this wonderful food? Have you any idea how lucky you are?”
“Well”, she said contemplatively, “Try looking at it through the other side of the telescope. I live here in the middle of the country, very few locals come near us because they think we are dangerous eccentrics, so I get very little contact with the outside world. So I just sit around doing domestic chores for me da all day, reading the odd book or listening to music if he isn’t using the record player, and having to listen to his endless stories about his travels. It’s not the greatest life for a twenty-three year old girl to be leading, now is it?” Now so chastened it might appear that he had found his virginity again, he said, in the most contrite tone he could affect, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so selfish.” Then he paused a while and said, “So you must be glad that I arrived here a few days ago, then?”
At this remark her eyes lit up and she stretched her arms out to embace him. He lay down gently next to her and looked silently into her eyes for a short while. Then she punctured the silence with: “I’ve been wondering what force it was brought you here. There’s so much evidence to suggest the world is completely aleatory, but when something like this happens you have to wonder if there isn’t someone out there looking after you. D’you know, for a couple of minutes after I found out who you were, I was really distressed, but now I don’t even care. I know what sort of person you are deep down.”
He couldn’t think of any words to express how he felt about her right now that had the same clarity as a warm, tight embrace and a wet, sloppy kiss, so that was the option he went for. So began another epic night of ebullient concupiscence that I won’t bore you by recounting the details of. When it was over, he lay back for a while to enjoy the moment of post-coital ecstasy and then went back into an embrace with her. They fell asleep that way, not saying anything, finding comfort in the world outside the intellect. He dreamt a dream of home, one with little symbolic resonance to our story, but then woke up, almost entirely naked, with Siobhan’s arms locked around him. Suddenly he felt the pinch of an Irish summer night in a big old house in the era before central heating was invented. He tried to get out from her rhadamanthine embrace without opening her eyelids to reveal her lethargic eyes. After struggling for a few seconds, he suddenly realised this was the first time he had ever tried to do this. Would it be the first of many, or would love fade into mere familiarity and these embraces become fewer and further between? He didn’t ponder on this too long, as his priority was to get out from this embrace and find some clothes. He eventually got out of it, not by separating her arms, but by slithering out oleaginously, taking particular care not to cause any disturbance when his head passed the area between Siobhan’s legs. He then fumbled around for his underwear, his standard-issue wehrmact vest and underpants, then felt them to see which was the front and back, then put them on and snuck surreptitiously back under the covers. This time, peace did not come dropping slow, the blind arbiter between high and low did not settle gently on our hero, for there were things going on in his head that his subconscious had obviously decided it couldn’t come to grips with. Yet it was not Tom’s lenghty discourse that troubled him the most, but one brief, almost throwaway remark by Siobhan.

You have to wonder if there isn’t someone out there looking after you.

What made her say this? Was it a rebellion against the secularity with which she had been brought up, as he, in his own mind had been reacting against the conservatism of his parents by embracing Nazism? Or was there something more fundamental going on, a desire for there to be something beyond what there was now, something that would still be there when youth and beauty had faded? Yet how could he reconcile this longing with the desire to be a free agent intellectually? Not having read a great deal of philosophy, he thought about these things as if he was the first person to whom these thoughts had occured. Frustratingly, he often lacked the verbal apparatus to think coherently about these things, although this led him to the revelation, for himself at least, that these thoughts might be a by-product of the ability to verbalise.
When did we first start to realise what a mixed blessing our consciousness was? Was it with Freud, with the Romantics, with Descartes, Shakepeare, with Sophocles, or when we first started to paint bulls on the side of our caves? I use the term `we’ with some reluctance as I’d struggle to paint a bull on the side of a cave with some blood myself. Yet if they knew what they were getting themselves into, those pilose troglodytes of Altimara and Ribadesella, would they have decided that maybe the mininalist interior would hipper this epoch? It was too late for Schillerz, or perhaps too early, as the drugs that took the sharp, jagged edges from the raging inferno between our ears without causing any short-term side effects had to wait another generation to be patented. So he tossed and turned, stopping only occasionally to admire the elegant, voluptous form of the woman lying next to him, run his fingers through her thick curls, listen to the soft respitory noises she made, wondering what pleasant dreams she might have if he succumbed to the temptation to kiss her neck.
It was during one such reverie that he noticed her respirations become more intense, her arms start to flail, her heavy eyelids open, her head shake, and her recognition that she had woken up occur. Schillerz reflected on how he had never seen a woman wake up before, and how, in it’s own way, this was more intimate than losing his virginity. When she got herself together, she turned to him and asked, “Have you been up long?”
“Actually, I only slept for a few hours. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Oh, thinking about the things me da was tellin’ yeh last night, were yeh?”
“Well, yes, in part. About some of the things you were saying as well.”
“Really?” she asked, sounding a little flattered. “What sort of things?” “Oh, you know the stuff about someone looking out for you?”
She gave a nod of recognition, but seemed unwilling to expostulate on the subject, and paused for a minute before asking, “I’ve got to go and milk the cow. Is there anything you want?”
He thought of asking for a cup of tea, but hadn’t given up on the thought of getting some shut-eye, so he just shook his head. Then the look that comes on people’s faces when they sudenly remember somthing usurped Siobhan’s visage, and she said, listen, today’s Friday, the day I usually go into town to get some groceries. You need some new clothes, and maybe we can go to see a fil-um as well.”
A look of apprehension on Schillerz’ face was recognised by Siobhan. She responded with a puzzled look, the sort that subtly, tacitly solicits explanation.
“Well, you see, the police in town know that a German spy is in the area, and they would instantly suspect me.”
She just smiled and held his hand, laughed a little, and said, “Hermes, if the guards knew that, they’d have been here days ago, ransacking the place. They hate me da ‘cause they know what a free spirit he is, and they suspect he does drugs as well. They just need the slightest excuse to come and bully him.”
Feeling only slightly reassured, he told her: “But when I was in that IRA cell there was a raid.” Then he reflected ironically, “That’s how I ended up here, actually.” Siobhan laughed uproariously at this. “Wait ‘till you tell me da that. He’ll get a great laugh out of hearing that ‘twas the guards that brought you here.” Then she became more serious and reassured him, “The guards have to be seen to be tough on paramilitaries, as the goverment wants to stay on the right side of the American and British legations. But really, they couldn’t give a damn. Anyway, none of them are great intellects, so they probably won’t even recognise your face. And even if they do know there’s a suspected nazi spy around, they won’t have informed the community at large because of the censorship policy. So you have nothing to worry about.” He reflected that maybe he could use a few new clothes, but wondered what a fil-um was.
She laughed and said, in ever so patronising a tone, “You Know a fil-um that y’do be seeing in a picture-house. Don’t you have those in Germany?” An ironic question, I grant you, but bear in mind they didn’t have media studies in school back then. Schillerz’ response was to say “Ah ja, ein kinospielfilm”, to which Siobhan responded with the predictable disdain of the monoglot. Schillerz told her that he had indeed seen many movies, and they were delighted to find out that they had seen many in common, so much so that if they weren’t yet living in a global village, at least it was a global townland. They talked for a while before she suddenly realised that she had meant to get up and feed the cows. She jumped out of bed, slithered into her dress and slipped into her shoes, her round, curvaceous hips thrusting themslves at Schillerz as she did so. On her way out the door, she asked if there was anything he wanted. Less certain that he would get back to sleep, he asked her for a cup of tea. She blew him a kiss as if to acknowledge compliance with his wishes.
The next thing he knew he was lying in bed with a cup of cold, coagulating tea on the bedside table. He dipped his finger in it, felt a beverage so lapidously cold that it must have been there for a few hours. When he took his finger out again, he saw that it was coated in a slimy film of unpasteurised milk residue. He wiped it disdainfully on the bed, confident that Siobhan, though a princess in her own way, would never notice if there was a pea under her matrass.
So, he’d slept for another few hours. Perhaps the raging beast within him was less of a wild tiger and more of an angry puppy that just needed a little affection. He decided to get up, struggled into his clothes, went downstairs, into the kitchen, from where the muffled sound of the wireless was the only evidence of life. When he got there, Siobhan was spreading some home-made blackberry jam on some some thickly buttered soda-bread. “So, Sleeping Beauty has decided to join the land of the living”, she averred, without irony. Tom looked from behind his Irish Times and added, “Rip van Hermes.” Schillerz smiled indulgently then sat down, while Siobhan, as if by a combination of telepathy and Pavlovianism, started to get his breakfast lately.
Tom closed his paper and wrapped it up in the peremptory way you do when you want to start a conversation. “So, Siobhan tells me you’re scared to go to Ballanasaoirse, Hermes. A little ironic, in view of what the name means.”
“I didn’t know it meant anything”, Schillerz admitted, contritely.
“It means `town of freedom’. Or Freiheidstadt, if you will.”
“Sprechen see Deutsch?”, asked Schillerz, enthusistically.
“Eine Kleine”, was Tom’s modest response, uttered while shaking his hand around it’s index finger axis. Meanwhile, Siobhan, her head turned away, breathed in deeply.
“I’ve got something you may like to look at upstairs”, said schillerz, in a tone that started off with enthusiasm and slid rapidly into apprehension. Tom suspected what it might be, but thought he would let himself be surprised. He gave Schillerz a nod of assent, unfolded his newspaper, while Siobhan turned around as if to bid him Godspeed. He returned a few minutes later with the manual the abwehr had issued him with before he landed in Ireland.
“I don’t know how much of this you could understand, if there’s anything you don’t understand just ask me”, he said, handing the manual to Tom, sounding slightly gratified that there may be some things he understood that Tom didn’t. However, as he sat down to eat breakfast, he noticed first chortles, then loud laughter coming from Tom’s chest. It appeared he could speak German fluently.
“So, we’re loud, pugnacious, argumentative, dirty peasants. I have to give your superiors credit for giving it to us up front, instead of developing a whole culture of simian caricatures like some nations we could mention.” Schillerz had enough of a grasp of Irish history by now not to need to ask which nations. Tom, who had been fairly engrossed in reading the manual, took a look at the paper on his knee, and said to Schillerz, “Oh, I’m sorry, did you want a look at this?” Schillerz nodded and accepted the paper. He asked how the paper was acquired, since he had never noticed anyone walk into town.”
“Sure don’t the leprechauns bring it”, said Tom, in an exaggeratedly Irish accent.
“Leprechauns?”, asked schillerz, looking a bit perplexed.
Tom made a show of flicking through the manual in his hand, and said, “Oh, I see they’re not mentioned here. Well, they’re little small men who dress all in green, wear little hats, and give good luck to people who’ve led virtuous lives, such as ourselves. Only in Ireland, though.”
There was a silent interim while Tom and Siobhan wathched Schillerz’ face contort into bewilderment, then, almost simultaneously, they both burst into laughter. Though, even in the pre-politically correct era, neither of them would have said so, it was sometimes fun to have a German round the house.
“A paper boy from a newsagent in town delivers it. We have to pay him a bit more, but he deserves it. Sure yeh never no what dangers might befall him coming to a place of ill-repute like this.”
This time Schillerz recognised the sarcasm, and laughed politely. Then he started to read read the paper. After reading a few articles, he sought some contextualisation. And was there a better man to give it than the man sitting across from him?
“So”, he asked, looking inquisitive like a particularly enthusiastic fresher, “I think I know who this De Valera is, but who is this Dillon?”
“He’s one of the leaders of the opposition”, said Tom, somewhat langourously, half-anticipating what the next question might be.
“And he leads a party with a completely different ideology, right?”
Tom smirked inwawrdly, coming as close to being smug as it was possible for a man of his intellect to come, at the accuracy of his prognostications.
“I wish, that’s the way democracy is supposed to work, with a vibrant civil society and a free press challenging every issue.” He gave a look of resignation that ensured Schillerz that this was not the case in this country at this time, then added, “Unfortunately, ideology has always taken a back seat to race and religion in this country. This Dillon, he’s a member of Fine Gael, the tribe of gaels, though they’re no more Gaels than the National Socialists are Marxists. Their fondest wish is for this country to be as much like Great Britain as possible. That’s why Dillon wants us to get invoved in this war, though it would mean most of our cities being bombed to the ground.” He reflected a little and said, much as I loathe and despise De Valera, I’m sometimes able to take cold comfort in the idea that the other crowd are worse. That’s what passes for democracy here, I suppose.” “What makes you say that...” he hesitated trying to pronounce the name of Ireland’s loyal opposition, and finally settled for “Dillon’s party are worse?”
“Well, they were in power for ten years, after the Anglo-Irish war, they had an opportunity to do so much, make so many changes, bring in so many innovations. Instead they supported the interests of big landowners and did everything in their power to stay on the right side of the British.”
Schillerz one again looked bemused. “I don’t understand this. You have a revolution to get rid of the English and for the first ten years after you have a government that tries to imitate them? How can this be?”
“I think I already said something about this, when I still thought you were from Dublin.”
“Ah yes, I remember now, I claimed that I came from a family that lost all it’s money in the revolution.”
“Ah, yes, it’s coming back to me as well. Isn’t it funny how you often forget the very first conversation you have with people, the one where you try to establish who they are, where they come from. I’ve never really figured that one out, though I don’t read as much psychology as I should.” He gave a melancholy look, immanent with the recognition that there were things about the human psyche that may never be known in his lifetime. Then he shook himself out of it and said, “as I recall, I tried to draw one of my little analogies between the Night of the Long Knives and the betrayal of the people that fought for Irish freedom. Of course it’s a lot more complicated than that, as there’s a lot of people here who’d rather be misgoverned from Dublin than from London. But I still think the form of government we have here now is a betrayal of what people fought for. And they’re offered no real alternative, as the labour movement never took off here, for various reasons.”
Schillerz gave a look that seemed to solicit more information. Sensing this, tom went on: “Well, there’s very little of an urban working class here, as there’s only one big city, and then the Labour Party here shot itself in the foot by not standing in the 1918 election, thinking t’would be better to get the independence issue settled. Of course, there’s many who believe your country’s leadership got entangled in the last war to stop the march of the SPD. I don’t suppose you know the story about Lenin, reading that the SPD had voted for war credits, and is supposed to have said, “Ah, sure don’t worry, ‘tis just a forgery. And then there was Jean Jaures, who thougth the socialist had no country, bless him. So maybe this country isn’t that different from the rest of Europe after all.” He grimaced at what a horrible thought this was. Schillerz, meanwhile became distraught at Tom’s putative nihilism.
“You don’t think democracy works, you don’t think fascism works, what do you believe in?”
“As someone who’s studied Buddhism and Taoism a lot, I’m a believer in the middle way. I think people want a certain level of social equity and security, but also the freedom to be whatever they want to be, and the rewards for achievement.” He paused, stroked his beard, and said ironically, “How you achieve this utopia is another matter. I think the first step is getting rid of the consumption of animal products. As long as we have this atavistic link to our primordial ancestors, we’re going to be rapacious beasts.”
Schillerz asked if this was why they only ate vegetarian food.
Tom nodded peremptorily, eager not to lose his train of thought. “Yes. I’m not alone in blaming all the ills of the modern world on meat. I think Tolstoy said something like man will be at war with himself as long as he eats the flesh of other animals. It’s a difficult argument for an intellectual to remain unpersuaded by. Y’know, Henry Ford based his system of mass production on Chicago slughterhouses. At much the same time, the US started herding Native Americans into reservations, the British started slaughtering Boers in concentration camps. I hear rumours that similar things happen with Jews in Germany today.”
“And with unmarried mothers in Ireland”, interrupted Schillerz, whether out of some residual patriotism or a desire to balance the argument he knew not. In any case, Tom, the person who first informed him of the Magdalen Laundries and industrial schools was not going to contradict him. He merely nodded and went on with his spiel.
“I’ve been to a vegetarian society, in India. It’s no utopia, and it won’t be after they get independence either. But there’s so little violence, the people are so gentle, they live in such harmony with the natural world. We could learn so much from them, if we could put our imperialistic superiority complex aside.
“Of course religion is also a problem there, though you’d never imagine it from reading the Gita or the Upanishads. The caste system...” he had no words fit to describe this, merely shuddered at the thought. Assuming Schillerz was at least vaguely acquainted with this concept, he went on: “Organised religion served a function early on in the history of civilisation, when it promoted the social order needed to build towns and cities. But now it’s an albatross around our necks. For example, the first book of Genesis tells us that God gave us dominion over the universe. This was a useful when we were developing agriculture, but it could eventually lead us to exploit the world’s resources until we perish. Actually, the ancient Romans would have done that if the “barbarians” hadn’t overcome them. La Mancha and parts of North Africa were once fertile pasture before they were chronically overfarmed. So, if this war doesn’t end civilisation as we know it, either we have to change the way we feed ourselves fundamentally, or some external factor will have to destabilise us.”
Schillerz, though he had realised how bogus the notion of Aryan supremacy was, was unable to see where this threat could come from, and Tom, realising this, started to fill him in.
“Well, some hisorians think that the reason Europeans conquered the rest of the world was that they were all competing against each other. Unfortunately this meant they were often vulnerable to attacks from Turks, although they never got past Vienna. I think this may continue after this war is over, with the new superpowers, America and Russia supporting different sides in conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere, in what really may be the final war of the teutons against the slavs. It may turn out to be both of their downfall.”
Who else but Tom, or maybe Leopold Bloom, could get from James Dillon to this totalising theory of history, as if he had a whole world wide web inside his head. While this discourse was going on, Siobhan, rather than quietly, stoically listening, or politely excusing herself, elected to watch the look on Schillerz’ face as he listened to Tom. It was a curious combination of high-browed intellectual and eager schoolchild that she could not resist, though she was in the stage of the relationship where her partner could do no wrong.
Tom, for his part, decided it was time to wind up this particular argument, the way people soak up the last bit of sauce on the plate with French bread.
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much, though. It’ll take centuries for western civilisation to crumble, and if the experience of the Roman Empire is repeated, these will be the most decadent, lustful years in it’s history. Read Decline and Fall if you don’t believe me. Though...” he adopted a contrite look, Schillerz looked at him inquisitively, Siobhan smiled ambiguously, he admitted, “I’ve never actually read Gibbon from start to finish myself.”
Relieved to see this chink in Tom’s intellectual armour, he thought this might be a good time to go and finish Candide, which found itself cast in the rare role of light relief. Tom also wanted to go and read, while Siobhan, for her part, had some work to do round the house. She told Tom however, that they would be going into town later, to which request he gave his silent, tacit assent, his paternal net extending to embrace the young man he seemed to be moulding in his image. Strangely, though Schillerz was conscious of this, it didn’t seem to bother him, at this particular time he was not giving much consideration to the long-term future. He didn’t realise how obsessed with him Siobhan was becoming, indeed he had little idea how obsessive they could be in general, how much of a need they have for fidelity. He was still finding his way around the strange, foreign land called gender relations, and was without any guidebook, or just had a really old one that was written by someone who’d only been there for a week or two. So when he left the room to go and read, failing, perhaps because of some vestigial misogyny to ask Siobhan if she needed any help, he failed to recognise the glance she gave him for what it was. Yet even if he doesn’t reciprocate her feelings for him, it may not matter, as she is the only woman he can trust, and he is in limbo as to what his future plans are. So she is his for the meantime at least. Is she cynical enough to realise this, or does she rationalise, or is she in denial altogether? I have to make a confession of my own, hot on the heels of Tom’s Gibbon admission: I don’t really know. I also find women perplexing, enigmatic creatures, which is why I’ve been able to tell you so little about what’s going on in her head. D’you know, there are times when I’d give up all my hip, post-modern distance for the confidence of a Balzac or a Jane Austen to screw her head open and take a look inside. Yet like a guy hovering round a pretty girl and never quite plucking up the courage to ask her to dance, I just float around her in a haze of epistemological miasma.
Anyway, Schillerz and Tom both leave the kitchen. Schillerz asks Tom if he’s going to read outside, as it seems like a nice day out. He says no, he thinks being outdoors exacerbates his pains. Schillerz gives this little thought at the time, infers from the look on Tom’s face that he won’t mind if Schillerz reads outside. He goes out into the garden, gets a deep lungful of the fresh country air, then sits down to read in the same place he was yesterday. There’s something deeply comforting about this. He’s gotten to the part where Candide gets to El Dorado, and finds gold all over the ground, and wonders why the natives aren’t all really rich§. Schillerz thinks of the stories he’s heard about people of the Weimar era having to bring a wheelbarrow load of cash to the shop just to buy a loaf of bread and papered their walls with money because it was cheaper than wallpaper. He reflects on how arbitrary money is, and how values vary from place to place. Then he hears the door opening and he turns round to see Siobhan bring him some green tea.
“I know you don’t like this stuff but you should drink it anyway. It’s good for you, full of antioxidants.”
Without replying he blows on it, takes a tentative sip.
“I’ve got to go and take care of the animals, and then weed the vegetable beds. Then we can go into town, if that’s okay with you.”
Having already been convinced that it was safe, he nodded assent.
Siobhan went to go and do her chores, but Schillerz, whose train of thought had been interrupted, started thinking about the way tom was treating him. Why was he being so generous to him? Surely he was not grooming him as a son-in-law. The idea that he had freed himself, intellectually from one form of tyranny to become enmeshed in another was a bit disconcerting. But then was it really tyranny, to have to spend a whole lifetime with such a goddess. Perhaps he was a male like any other, frightened of commitment, or maybe there was something deeper going on. Had Tom’s exegesis of the Irish state been what struck terror into his heart? After thinking about this for a while, he reflected on the irony that a few days ago he was hoping to help bring about a thousand-year Reich but now he was scared of having to make a descision affecting the remaining fifty or so years of his own life. Then he thought of how insulated he had become in the short few days he had been in this rural demi-paradise, far from the banners and the yellow stars, the jackboots and the armbands. Was there one soldier on the eastern front who would not take the prospect of a lifetime with this woman if it was offered to them? How quickly the most arbitrary events can change our whole Weltanschaaung.
After pondering these things for a while, he started to read the page of Candide that he had been staring blankly at for the last while. I like “while”. Nice and ambiguous, polymorphous even, malleable, nebulous. Gives me, and you, some room to move around in, unlike in a telemarketing job or a Balzac novel, or a movie for that matter. I guess that’s why I’m a writer and not an Time-and-Motion consultant. Actually there’s a whole set of reasons why i’m not a time-and-motion consultant, but you probably don’t want to know what they are. Just the sort of reasons you’d imagine.
Anyway, Schillerz gets back to reading the book, but the perspicacity that he was bringing to bear on his interpretation had dissipated into a cloud of angst, hypercognition brought about by the green tea, and perhaps a touch of hangover from last night’s fraught introduction to the dubious plesures of narcosis. Yet though he was not really assimilated the book, he would rather be reading it than just sitting there. Vestigial work ehtic from a man whose nation had recently smelted the words Arbeit macht frei into the consciousness of the world, no doubt. It would take more than one hoke of a joint to turn him into a dolce far niente Latin. But then he wasn’t long coming round to the anti-nazi point of view, was he? Perhaps when he gets round to reading the Tao another major tergiversation will come about.
So, after an hour or so of that uneasy combination of hazy, lethargic reading and furious neurosis, he heard the door opening again, this time Siobhan was wearing a long jacket and had a handbag draped over her shoulder, and a silk scarf caressing her neck. Most noticeably, she had a blue headscarf tied around her head, and Schillerz might have been mistaken about this, but she might have been wearing just a hint of lipstick. Perhaps that was the effect she was going for, doing enough to irritate her moral betters in town without appearing to draw attention to herself.
“So, are we ready to hit the road?”
I’m unaware of whether there’s an exact German equivilant in German for this phrase so I can’t tell you what his reaction was on a semantic level. He was certainly eager to go into to town, though his fears of apprehension had not completely dissapeared.
“I see you’ve gotten all dressed up. You didn’t really need to. I like you just the way you are.”
She blushed a little, said, “well, sometimes it’s nice to dress up. Anyway, to get into the best seats in the cinema, we need to look our best.” Schillerz, who had been way too preoccupied to give that any thought, started to scratch his stubble, and ask, “Should I tidy up a little bit as well?”
She looked peremptorily at her watch, then at him, and said, well, maybe you should. but we’d better make it snappy.” She beckoned Schillerz inside with a nudge of her head. Schillerz followed her inside, watched her peek her head in the door and ask Tom was it alright for Schillerz to borrow any of his clothes. He didn’t hear the response, but he sensed that it was one of assent. Siobhan, revealing yet another facet of her complex persona, clicked her fingers, and said, “right, up to the bathroom, get your shirt off. I’ll be up a minute.” A little taken aback by this tone, he nonetheless obeyed. She arrived with the sort of punctuality of which Schillerz’ compatriots would be proud, bearing a razor, a shaving brush, a cup of hot water and a towel.
“Wait a minute, are you planning to shave me?”, he asked nervously.
“Relax, I do it to me da all the time, ‘specially when he gets those pains of his. Now, put your face up against the mirror.”
Reluctantly, he agreed. He watched the reflection of the towel being placed around his neck, the shaving cream being applied to his face, but he was to nervous, and she too hurried, to appreciate the eroticism of this act. She placed the razor at the base of his neck, and she glided it gently towards his jaw. His eyes were closed when this was going on, but he opened them when this first stroke was over, and, to his relief, saw Siobhan wiping shaving cream, but no blood, from the razor.
Then, as she repeated the same movement on the other side of his face, she said, “Da was tellin’ me that, in India, barbers will add all sorts of moisturisers and scents and stuff, and still only charge a couple of farthings. He always meant to ask them where he could get them, but never got round to it.” Whether she said this to allay Schillerz nerves or her own, it was hard to tell. In any case, Schillerz, though growing more confident of her abilty to shave him without killing him, chose to acknowledge this statement with a mere raising of his eyebrows, a gesture that gently amused siobhan.
She finished off shaving him, noticing his discomfort receding gradually, the way a crumpled piece of paper will gradually unfurl, but never return to it’s original shape. She wiped the remaining cream off his face, dried it off, , examined his neck for any cuts or bruises that she might have caused, and then gave herself an inward look of satisfaction, the sort of one the Lord would have given himself on one of the first six days of creation when there were no other conscious beings to appreciate his genius. She then grabbed a bottle of after shave from the mantle piece below the mirror and allowed some to drip onto her open palm. Schillerz, who was now comfortable enough to start making frivolous conversation again, said, “I thought it would be hard to get this stuff right now.” As she started to splash it on his neck, he could see her puzzled look in the mirror, so he added, “There is a war on, so I thought people would get alcohol from any source they could.”
There was a look of recognition on her face, what would be called an anagnorisis if this was a Greek tragedy and the end was looming. “Ah well, people here are always able to make alcohol for themselves. Sure there’s a fella in town who still makes poteen, like his father and his father before him. “C’mon”, she said then saw him getting ready to put his shirt back on, and said, “No, no, sure didn’t yeh hear me askin’ me da if we could use his clothes”, then beckoned him in hte direction of her father’s room. He looked as contrite as politeness demanded, then followed her.
Tom’s room was as amiably ramshackle as Schillerz might have expected. It seemed he was one of those people who relish clutter, but he could sense, in his brief sojourn there, an underlying order, a sort of solipsistic feng shui that reflected the cross-currents of Tom’s mercurial mind. Statues and tapestries from diverse cultures placed in positios that seemed arbitrary to him, clothes scattered on the floor, books lying half open, bed unmade. None of these things diverted siobhan from her primary purpose, which was to transform Schillerz, Pygmalion-like, into a presentable cinema companion. She bent down into his cupboard, giving Schillerz the kind of view of her taut buttocks that men never get tired of seeing, promping a potentially embarrasing tumescence on the part of Schillerz, who was dresssed only in his underwear. Fortunately for him, she handed him a shirt without turning her face around to witness Schillerz’ member strecthing the cotton on his standard-issue underwear, and said, “Try this on”, adding, “It’s pretty old, from when me da got more exercise and knew less recipes.” Schillerz took it, checked to see that she was still facing away, and smelled it gently to see just how old it was. As he picked it up, he noticed how much heavier it was than the shirts he had back home. The smell was certainly noticeable, but it was a smell of ossification rather than decompostion, like a Chinese philosopher’s beard rather than the four-day stubble he had just seen washed down the drain. He tried it on, and it was perfect for his purposes at this precise moment, just the right size at the neck and shoulders but long enough at the waist to conceal whatever potentially embarrasing appendages might have recently emerged. She took a look round, took a deep breath, and said, “Ah, that’s grand. Will you try these on now”, and handed him a pair of black trousers. He bent down, unelfconsciously to put them on. Did Siobhan also take a brief, fleeting glance at Schillerz hips tightening? Does it really matter, in the bigger scheme of things? Anyway, the pants were a bit loose, so he went into his room to find his braces. he chose not to inform her, as it might complicate things, and allowed her to continue burrowing through her father’s things. However, preoccupied as she was, she still managed to ask “where yeh goin?” He told her, then came back, a minute or so later, with her father’s trousers hanging comfortably from his shoulders, his shirt tucked neatly in, and his erection lost in the loose fabric. She gave him a look, compounded of satisfaction and relief, and handed him a shirt and tie. She watched him try them on, after making a desultory effort to tidy the clothes of her father, who in any case, wouldn’t care all that much. She watched him put on the tie, acutely aware of the eroticism implicit in the carressing of his neck by this glabrous, silky, material. She enjoyed this, as if it was some reward for her hunt in the trecherous realms of her father’s cupboard. When he was finished, she gave him a kiss on the cheek, then took him by the hand and led him hurriedly down the stairs, not giving him time to think about the symbolism of fitting so comfortably into Tom’s clothes.
They went down the stairs, which was often a struggle for Schillerz to keep his balance while Siobhan kept his hand in her firm grip and walked rapidly downwards. Her itenirary included, it seemed, the living room, where she presented her creation to her father, as if seeking his approbation. They walked in, failing to gain his atttention for a second or two, until she interjected, rather impatiently, “Da!”, causing him to turn round, look up from the book he was reading, slide his spectacles down his nose a little, and say, “Ah, Hermes, you’re lookin’ like a right mickey-dazzler.”, in an exageratedly Irish accent. Siobhan looked pleased with herself, while Schillerz’ evident confusion induced him to add, “Du biest ein Schonne jonge mann, nicht warr”, an act that made him seem, to Siobhan at least, less of a solicitous interpreter than an omniscient creator, for was he not adressing the fruit of his loins and a young man dressed in his own clothes. Schillerz, less captious by nature responded with a mixture of flatteredness and admiration for his linguistic ability. He bowed, and said “Danke Schonn, MeinHerr”, which only threw high-cholestoral palm oil on the smouldering flames of Siobhan’s pique. She bade her father adieu, saying, “Well, we’d better be off, if we want to get into town before the shops close.” Schillerz waved and added, “Auf Wiedersehen”, prompting Siobhan to clench his hand firmly enough to induce mild pain.
They stepped out into the sunshine, at that time of the day when the sun decides it’s time to start calling it a day and making the long, slow, journey to the horizon. Virgilian? The great man’s probably brushed off much worthier pretenders than me from his Olmpian perch. Anyway, Schillerz had other things on his mind.
“So, why were you so rude to your father just then?”
Giving him a slightly contemptuous glance, she said, “I wasn’t rude, I’m just in a hurry.”
As he had always assumed she was perfectly honest with him in the past, this was a bit disconcetring for Schillerz.
“Well... I’m not saying you’re lying but... I just got the sense that you became a little tense when your father spoke German to me just there.”
She took an extremely deep breath, the sort that made her breasts heave, a process that Schillerz could not resist a surreptitous glance at.
“I just wish he wouldn’t show off so much. He knows I don’t speak any other languages, even though they teach us Irish in school from the time we’re four.”
This last piece of information surprised him, but that was a tangent he didn’t want to go off on right now. Instead he said, in one of his rapidly mushrooming moments of insight: “Well, your father has little to show off but his intellect. You have your youth, your beauty, you have... ”, he blushed a little, “me. At least I think that’s why you’re bringing me into town.” This cozened her enough to stop complaining about her father, but she opted to put her anger about him into a small compartment in the back of her mind rather than take it out an examine it to see what an otiose encumbrance it was.
This led to an uneasy silence, not as uneasy as it would have been if there were other human beings watching them, but pretty uneasy all the same. He was left to reflect on the incongruity of their dress and the surrounding hedges on each side of the dirt path that brought tem to the main road, flanked on each side by fecund hedgegrows where innumerate species of grass and weed seemed to dwell. It was as if he was a 17th century French courtier dressed in baroque clothes with baubles hanging from every stitch in his clothes sent from Versailles to find a reclusive bucolic six-string viol player.
His musings were interrupted by the sight of Plato, who had been burrowing in one of the hedgerows, turning around, almost the way a builder on scaffolding would to have a butchers at a passing voluptress. He ran over to Siobhan and raised his head to receive a tickle at the base of his neck, before going back to what he was doing.
Schillerz used this opportunity to break the silence.
“It’s a bit surprising that he didn’t follow us”, he offered.
“Not to me. I know that he can sense that we’re going into town, from the way we’re dressed.”
“Hmm. That’s something I’ve been meaning to ask. Why is it necessary to dress up so much, when most people aren’t able to afford such clothes?” A slightly presumptuous question, as he hadn’t been in the country that long, but a valid one nonetheless.
“Appearance is very important here, hermes. If we don’t look our best, we might not get let into the best shops, or the nicest seats in the cinema.”
Schillerz thought, as the more percipient of you will have guessed, of five-pointed yellow stars, causing a melancholy look to descend over his face.
Siobhan went on unperturbed, grateful to be the pedagogue for once, saying, “Me da was tellin’ me that in Barcelona and Madrid, people would also be judged by the way they dressed, and would have to wear tight black clothes and always with the ties. Then for a brief while the two cities were run by anarcho-syndicalist collectives and people were allowed wear whatever the hell they wanted, but it only lasted a few years. It’s one of those periods in history that you wish you were a part of, when people’s inhibitions are cast aside, even for, what’s that word? An ephemeral moment.”
Briefly, Schillerz reflected on the irony that his compatriots were fighting in the biggest conflagration in human history while he was heading to the pictures in a small town in Ireland. But this too passed, like the butterflies that emerged from hedges to fade into the hazy evening sunshine. Eventually they came towards the end of the path, gradually hearing the sound of the odd passing car, and as they came closer, a sporadic horse and cart as well. When they came to the point where the dirt track that led to the farmhouse merged with the main road, Schillerz felt a pang of recognition, and a strange nostalgia for the time he had last passed here, though it was only a few days back, but profound, eventful days, days that shook his world, turned it upside-down, leaving him in a dizzy haze that he was just about recovering from. And yet he sensed that the adventure was not over yet. If the Reich had formed itself in a few whirlwind years, with the aim of lasting for a thousand years, then surely the man he had become would live for another forty or fifty. Yet he felt difficulty communicating these ideas to Siobhan, found it hard to express the queasy melancholy that consumed him as he trod this road again.
As he recalled, it was about quarter of an hour’s walk from this point to the town. he wondered how different it would seem from his initial first impression, contingent as that was on his preconceptions about Ireland. Now he was going to be looking at the same place through a whole different prism, like a college student coming home from his first semeseter and realising how narrow and unexciting his family and erstwhile friends are, man. His meditations were interrupted by the sound of a horse and cart, which would have been a pleasant, bucolic sound if it wasn’t for the experience he had had a few days back. He leaned over to Siobhan, whispered in her ear a request to describe the person driving it. She gave him a perplexed look, to which he replied:
“Don’t be like that. Just tell me what he looks like. I’ll explain later.”
She took a brief glance back, trying not to stare, and made out the face of a person who might not be that much older than themselves, but who a life of hard labour, a lack of education and a fondness for alcohol had wizened, as well as perhaps a desire to reach manhood in a time and place where the pleasures of childhood were somewhat dubious. He wore a ferret cap, tilted slightly, and a wild woodbine hung languidly from his thin, chapped lips. Siobhan described him to Schillerz as best as she could, and he was relieved to detect no resmemblence to the person who had picked him up a few days ago. How many days was it? Three, Four, he couldn’t be sure, for, though teutonic blood still ran in his veins, the last few days and nights had melted into a nebulous haze.
Anyway, the town came into view in time, and it did seem different, partly because of the incongruous sunshine that small Irish towns never seem prepared for, with their whitewashed walls and their narrow streets and their grey slate roofs. Also, it was Friday afternoon, and they were not the only two people coming in from the country to do a bit of shopping. Some of the younger kids had also been let out from school, adding to a general brio that seemed absent a few days hence. Yet when they got closer to the centre of the town, a square dominated inevitably by a domineeringly phallic church steeple, he started to feel a bit uncomfortable. He could feel people’s eye’s straying in his direction, then whispers being thrust surreptitously into the ears of old women by their haggard, emaciated peers. He sought reassurance from Siobhan that they were not suspicious that he was a foreign spy.
“Will yeh relax, boy. They’re old women. They do this every time a stranger walks into town.”
So, it wasn’t a fearful German or Eastern European village where anyone could be a traitor, but a wild west frontier town where outsiders got the most guarded of welcomes.
Then he noticed Siobhan take an urgent look at her watch and felt himself being dragged to a store which bore the gloomy moniker: O DONNELL & SONS: GROCERIES AND PROVISIONS. Outside the store he noticed a middle-aged woman, corpulent and ruddy of complexion, staring at Siobhan, tapping her watch peremptorily. When Siobhan noticed her, she walked a bit quicker in her direction. She gave her an uneasy smile, and said, “Sorry I’m late. Let me explain I...”
“You don’t have to explain”, interrupted the woman in a snarling, contemptuous voice, revealing a mouth that didn’t have a full complement of teeth,“I can see ye’ve got a new fancy man. Well, let’s be doin’ business all the same. I don’t have any more time to wastin’, not like some people I could mention.” She opened her hand, which had been clenched with a limpet-like tightness up till now, and released a couple of slips of paper, gave them to Siobhan. In contrast, Siobhan opened her handbag with the grace and elegance of an 18th Century Parisian aristocrat or a self-conscious nouveaux riches American Plutocrat, and handed the old woman some similar slips of paper, to which she responded with the most cursory, grudging gesture of gratitude, after which she darkened the doorway of the shop, which wasn’t all that bright to begin with, if the truth be told. Schillerz remarked to himself that it was surprising that those two females belonged to the same species, let alone the same race. When they were a few steps away, and he was categorically sure that this monstrous creature was out of earshot, he asked: “What was that all about?”
Grudgingly, as if this was one of those things in her life she didn’t want to discuss with anyone, like menstruation and defaction, she said: “I have an arrangement with that old bag. She and her husband don’t eat sugar, because they want to hang on to the few teeth they hace left, me and me da don’t eat meat ‘cause of our convivtions, and don’t smoke tobacco cause... well you know. So every week we meet here and swap our ration cards. It’s not something i’m particularly proud of, it’s just something that has to be done. At least it’s only going to happen for as long as this stupid fucking war goes on.”
He reflected on the irony that the war’s tentacles were a bit more sesquipidelian than he had imagined, and he was not the only one whom they had thrown into strange alliances, albeit the difference in Siobhan’s case was aesthetic rather than political. He asked her when she was going to go and get her own rations, to which she replied: “Oh, that old bag’s goin’ to be gossiping for at least half an hour, largely about us, I’d imagine. The whole town’ll be talkin’ boutcha for days.”
This struck fear into Schillerz’ heart, prompting his Adam’s apple to expand as if an incubating alien was about to give birth to it’s offspring in his neck. Siobhan could not fail to notice this aberation of nature, and rushed to offer reassurance.
“Calm down, Hermes. These people haven’t got enough imagination to think that you might be a German spy. They probably just think you’re a young journalist down from Dublin to visit me da.” She Paused and added, “Let them have their little bit of gossip. They don’t have much else to do, living in a place like this.” She followed this with another pregnant, Pinter-Play pause, where Schillerz adopted a contrite look and told himself he shouldn’t be so paranoid. When she spoke again, it was in a tone designed to take some of the tension out of the situation. “C’mon, lets go and get some new clothes for yeh, like we said we would. I’ve got a friend who works in a shop over here.” She nudged her head in the direction of a clothes shop that, from the outside, seemed as dreary and nondescipt as the grocery store. When they got inside however, it seemed much brighter. Behind the counter were a wide, polychromatic array of skirts, blouses, dresses, with a small, more modest section of men’s clothes hidden away like a difficult child or a dissolute cousin. These seemed to warrant Siobhan’s attention less than the girl behind the counter, whose face seemed to light up at the sight of her.
“Siobhan! How’s it going?”, she asked, as Siobhan leaned over the counter to embrace her friend, who gave Schillerz a coy look, sizing him up briefly with the bright blue eyes which rested uncomfortably in an acned, plicated face where the chin seemed to desire convergenge with the forehead.
She introduced Schillerz to him by his original adopted moniker, didn’t give any details about where he came from. Then they started a gossipathon of their own where they talked about their friends from school who were marrying carpenters or becoming mathmeticians in the civil service. He suddenly felt superfluous, like a fifth wheel or a hairbrush at at Hitlerjugend rally. His attention to their conversation dissapated rapidly and he found his eyes wandering rapidly around the shop, wondering to himself what social rituals could there be in which these elaborate fabrics were showcased. He thought of church, but coming from a protestant background, imagined that something more austere would be worn. Then, as if by some ESP or telepathy or divine providence or Victorian Novel predictability, Siobhan’s friend’s voice suddenly raised it’s tone and said, “Oh, Siobhan, D’you know there’s a dance on at the crossroads tonight?” Siobhan’s face lit up, for though she recognised how archaic this ritual was, she relished the chance to show Schillerz this slice of authentic rural Irish culture. Also, she rationalised that, like with the sugar rations, in a time and place like this you had to make the most of what you got. Schillerz, however, perhaps the Ur-German backpacker, looked a little confused. Sensing that her friend had spotted this, she moved swiftly, like a benign Machiavelli or a solicitous spin-doctor to cover for him. “He’s from Dublin, just down for a few days. He’s more used to dancing to jazz music in places like the Gresham and the Shelbourne, arentcha, Patrick?” She grasped his hand, nervously trying to ascertain whether this act was perceptible to the third person in the room. Schillerz nodded with meek alacrity, like a kid told to keep his hands under the table, or in Schillerz’ case, over the table. “Yes, yes. The Gresham. Fine place”, he said, sounding curiously uncomfortable with a persona he thought he had merely passed through, but now was finding himself, contrary to Heraclitus’ advice, going back into the same river again.
Siobhan’s loquacious friend helped him out by waxing lyrical thus: “Ah, sure, now’s your chance to get a taste of real ireland. We’ll have to find the right clothes for yeh, though. Let me see, your a 38, right?”
Schillerz was used to a whole different set of measurements but was willing to put his immediate sartorial future into the hands of this young woman all the same. She reached over to find a thick, green linen shirt which, for some reason she thought would suit Schillerz. She pointed him to the changing room which lay in the oposite corner of the shop, behind a heavy beige curtain. He went behind it dutifully, and tried it on, and though it was indeed his size, he found it a bit garish. While he tried it on he heard whispering going on outside and assumed they were taliking about him but his attempts to eavesdrop were in vain.
He came out to receive unqualified approbation from the two girls.
“Well, isn’t it a handsome fella yeh’ve got for yerself there, Siobhan.”
“To be sure, Kate, she replied, taking the purse out of her handbag and making it clear to Schillerz that the choice of whether to buy this shirt or not was not his. He acquised, realising that perpetuating her friendship with Kate was important enough to neccesitate disregarding his feelings.
“So what time is the dance on?” Siobhan asked, in that way that you do when you’re starting to wrap up a conversation.
“Nine O’ Clock, I think, at the usual place.”
“Grand. We’ve got a bit of shopping to do, then we want to see a fil-um.”
“Oh, I went to see a grand fil-um the other day. The Man I Married, ‘tis called. Well worth seeing, I think. Still in, I’d say.”
Thinking this movie the sort of love story that she was a sucker for, she thanked her and took her leave. They went to a few other, dark, dusty shops, Siobhan getting the things they need while Schillerz looked with fascination at the scoracious posters advertising wares that were often not available, bearing cartoonish figures that bore only a notional resmeblance to the real Irish people he had encountered. They got to the cinema on time, which Schillerz would not have recognised as such, used to the modernist designs of his compatriot architects as he was. This building had clearly been used for something else before the world woke up to the vision of edison and the Lumieres. A church for one of those Calvinist sects that went around proselitising 19th century Irish villages with their dreary, funless dogma, perhaps. An old man, with a couple of forlorn wisps of hair dragged across his head, sat on a crochety wooden chair, with an equally superannuated table in front of him, on which rested an old tin, which was used as a money box. Siobhan bade him good-day, and he returned the greeting in a voice that was tremulous and apparently less judgmental than some he had encountered in this town. Siobhan gave him a half-crown, and he fumbled around the tin with hands on whom the constant contact with the cupro-nickel seemed to have left a patina the way a snail leaves a shiny, slimy trail. He eventually found the right change and wished them to enjoy the show with as much conviction as a fourteen-year-old responds when asked if he’s learned anything interesting in school today. They went in to take their seats, which, again, were not the soft, contiguous seats he was used to, but hard wooden chairs in which trying to get comfortable would be a waste of time and energy.
In case you don’t know, The Man I Married is a 1940 movie, directed by Irving Pichel, starring Joan Bennett and Francis Ledger. It concerns an American woman who marries a nice German guy in the mid ‘30s and goes home to live in Germany with him, only to find that he’s really a Nazi, who leaves her for a stereotypically teutonic type. How it ended up in a cinema in a small town in Ireland so quickly is a bit of a mystery, but it’s worth remembering that this was the pre-Jaws era when block-booking had yet to be introduced, and sleeper hits that might never be seen again were often shifted to remote circuits. Anyway, that’s not really the point. What you really want to know is how our heroine and hero react to this tale of ethnic and philosophical mismatch, right?
Well, at first, Schillerz finds the portrayal of the German character moderately amusing, the way an English person would to the portrayal of Cockney gangsters in GW Pabst’s Threepenny Opera or the London Times theatre critic in Istvan Szabo’s movie Mephisto. Or, for that matter, any of the propaganda films of the ‘30s that depicted the English as effete and not totally averse to the pleasures of same-sex intercourse. Then, when it gets to the point when they return to Germany and he starts to see where they’re going with all this, he gets uneasy. It’s not the Germany he knows, for one thing, but a Hollywood vision of a dark, hyperindutrialised dystopia, Michigan with swastikas, or New Jersey with bratwurst. Yet he sees something of himself in the main character, idealistic, swept away by a current of patriotism while his better judgment is dismissed like some anemic Cassandra tremulously trying to indicate to him how crazy all this is. He’s surprised at how well the makers of this movie from the new world understand what motivates those living in their ancestoral lands, as if a young child had figured out the motives for his parent’s alcoholism. He also feels for the female lead, who realises that her husband was not all he seemed. more importantly, though, how does Siobhan react to this character? While Schillerz watchs with relative intellectual detachment, scratching his chin occasionally, she starts to shuffle with increasing tension, contorting constantly into ever more uncomfortable positions in the process. She looks over at Schillerz occasionally to discern his reaction, yet his face is as enigmatic as the poker player in a Western who you know is going to walk away with all the money at the end. This isn’t a deliberate choice on the part of Schillerz, who is burdened, or gifted, depending on your perspective with that teutonic intellectual and emotional distantciation. They even have one of those big compound words for it, it might be Verfremsdung but don’t quote me on that one. Whatever it’s called, it comes across as deliberate inscrutability, something she’ll have to take up with him when the movie is over. It does dissapate a little, though, at a scene where they try to replicate a Nazi rally and it ends up looking a bit more like a 70’s disco with all the rapid heils, which amuses Schillerz enough to draw a mild laugh from his lips. At the end of the movie, though, she watchs his reaction with even more intense scrutiny, so much so that she trusts her ears to pick up the plot for her. For, as the heroine gets back to the US at the end, she thinks she notices a glistening in his eyes, a suggestion that pity for this character might, just possibly have moistened his tear ducts enough to produce one, solitary tear, the sort of tear that surface tension one the eye never allows to drip down the cheek, but still indicates so much. She watches his eyes like a hawk, as the moonchrome images flicker, and maybe, just perhaps, the reflections of these images are refracted through a tear, a tear that would mean so much.
When the movie ends and the lights go up, she stares, without saying anything, directly into his eyes. He wonders why, but as she places her finger on his eyelid and feels the moist tear coagulate into a round drop on her fingertip, which after cursorily looking round, she places on her tongue, drinking it’s salty viscous liquid as if it was some divine ambrosial nectar. This would be the moment where they kissed passionately, but bear in mind this is an Irish cinema in the ‘40s, so Siobhan has to repel his advances in this regard with a neurotic shake of head, which leaves him being the confused one.
On the way out, between glances hither and tither to see if there’s anyone that she recognises, she asks him why the film had such an impact on him.
“I don’t know”, he replied, blinking slightly as they emerged into the mellow declining light of an Irish summer evening, “I think I just felt for the woman in the film. It must be so scary to find out someone is so different from who you think they are?”
Sounding slighly ill at ease, she asked, “I’m not going to find that out about you, am I?”
He didn’t answer straight away, thought about saying that it depended on how long they stayed together or something similarly evasive, but then decided that such candour deserved to be reciprocated.
“I don’t even no what I’m going to find out about myself in the future. I know what I’m not anymore, but I don’t know what I’m going to become.”
That piece of confused, innocent, deer-caught-in-the-headlights honesty drew the sort of amourous, idolotrous glance that leads to major smooching in Hollywood movies and lengthy dance sequences in Bollywood movies. Here, however, Siobhan could only give him an embrace which was immanent with the promise of greater intimacy later on.
Unable to express those emotions that aren’t really communicable in words, she shifted the topic of conversation to the more immediate future.
“So, are yeh looking forward to going to the dance, then?”
“Yes, but aren’t we going to go home first?” She took a look at her watch, said, “I don’t think we’ll have time. It’ll take us an hour to get there on foot, so we’re better off going straight there.”
“But... aren’t you worried about your father?”
“Jesus Christ, Hermes, I make a big enough sacrifice by staying here when I could be in Dublin, or on the sort of adventures he keeps telling me about.”
Feeling chastened, he apologised, said he didn’t think about what he was saying.
After an awkward silence, she asked, “Will you be Patrick from Dublin while we’re at this dance?”
“Okay, but you think they’ll believe that?” “Well, I did, I think even my da did for a while.” “Well... what if I get asked questions about Irish politics and things like that?” “Just improvise. Or say something non-specific. But don’t worry. They’ll probably just ask you how you find life in the country, as opposed to the city that’s what...”
She paused, scanned his face to see if he could prognosticate what was coming next, but saw only a blank look. She took a deep breath and began: “Remember when I was telling you about those parties that me da has?” He nodded.
“Well, some of the younger journalists he brings along have taken a fancy to me. They stay here for a few days, tell me how much they like me, but it always turns out they have a sweetheart back in Dublin, and I get the sense, that, even if they didn’t, that I’m a bit too uncouth for them anyway.”
She paused, trying to cover her self-pity with a gloss of stoicism.
“Anyway, I’ve brought one or two of them to dances, but nobody ever wants to talk politics to them, just want to hear about how decadent the big smoke is. You can improvise on that, right?” He supposed that he could, and wanted to reassure her that he would be loyal to her, but decided that this was not the right moment.
So they kept on walking, out of the town and down a long, straight country road flanked on each side by walls composed of thick stones that hardy, hairy country men broke their backs moving. They talked for a bit more about the movie, but as they came closer to the dance and heard the music and the sounds of people converging from other directions the way you only can on a soft summer’s night, he asked what sort of music this was.
She told him it was traditional Irish music, of the sort that would not ruffle too many feathers in Church or government circles. She explained that a lot of the songs in this genre were lugubrious, self-pitying tales of imperial dominion, but that at it’s best the music could be uplifting and life-affirming in the most visceral way.
When they finally got there, it was a sight unlike any he had ever seen. Though he had seen an outdoor production of Tannhauser and been to a rally or two, he had never seen such frenetic dancing outdoors before. To Schillerz, they seemed less the chaste, comely maidens that Eamon de Valera would fetishise a few years later, than worshippers at an ancient Pagan festival, which is probably what their ancestors were, before they adopted a religion that considered dance a prelude to sacreligous acts. In fact, this was the closest Schillerz had come to seeing the Ireland of My life for Ireland, except that this was real and he could focus on whatever he wanted, whether the corpulent, pock-marked musicians stopping between drinks to take the odd sip of guinness, or the rosy-cheeked girls dancing in their embroidered green linen dresses, which they lifted occasionally to reveal their fat round farmers-daughter calves, or the boys they danced with, short-haired, often bearing the wispiest moustaches, wearing big, thick polished leather shoes that they would save for occasions like this.
Actually, he didn’t get much time to survey the scene before Siobhan decided she didn’t want to be a mere spectator at this ritual. She grabbed Schillerz by the hand, brushed off his protestations that he didn’t know how to dance this way with reassurances that he should just copy her.
This wasn’t an easy thing to do for, in a melee of sprightly rustic nymphs dancing in an orgy of kinesis in front of a setting summer sun, none was more energetic or dextrous than her. He made an effort to copy everything she did, yet the apparent elasticity of her ankles and the motor that must have propelled her hips were features that weren’t included in the body nature gave him. At first he felt merely inadequate, but as everybody else formed a circle around Siobhan to admire her terpsichorian skills, he felt increasingly self-conscious. He tried harder to replicate her moves, yet found his ankles getting increasingly entangled with each other. It seemed the harder he tried, the more he showed up his own awkwardness. Then one moment he got so tangled up in himself that he fell to to the ground, breaking what would otherwise have been a bad fall with his elbows. He looked up, expecting to see looks of disdain all around, but instead, to his amazement, heard loud applause, the applause of a people whom years, generations, centuries of disaster had inured to failure. As Siobhan helped him up to his feet and he brushed the dust from his clothes, he looked around to see the smiling, often toothless face brighten up and reflected how differently they saw things in this country.
Siobhan decided that they had done enough to deserver a break, and took Schillerz to sit down on one of the wooden chairs that were placed around the crossroads. He just puffed and panted, maybe did a bit panting than puffing, actually, while she waved over at Kate and some of her friends. They came over, kate greeted her with: “Well, your new friend might be able to do with a few dancin’ lessons.” Siobhan held his hand, as if to assure him that no aspersion was intended. Then they started gossiping again. At first, he listened in, eager to see Siobahn reveal more about this aspect of her character. Then his attention drifted back to watch the dance. He wondered where they got all this energy from, these boys and girls who toiled in the fields all day and then danced till the sun kissed the horizon. It must be somthing in their diet, he concluded, wishing for a while that he knew more about that sort of stuff. Also he noticed that the sun’s osculation with the horizon wasn’t reflected in some of the humans in his immediate presence. It was something he would seek clarification on later on. To his relief, no-one really tried to engage him in any protracted discourse, just the formailities he could answer without taxing his imagination too much. Still, he enjoyed the experience the way a tourist does, or even someone watching a documentary on TV, without ever engaging in it after his initial embarressment. As it grew darker and people started to drift away, he grew a little weary and became conscious that he wasn’t a tourist who could go and see the next sight or a TV viewer that could change the channel, but someone who was really there. He looked, suggestively at his watch a few times until Siobhan said to one of her friends, “God, it’s getting late, maybe we should hit the road.” Her friend agreed, bade Schillerz a polite goodbye, and then drifted off in various directions. Eventually Siobhan too left, waving politely to a few casual acquaintances. When they got far enough from the music, Schillerz said, “You know, back home, if boys and girls were dancing together, at the end of the night, slow music would be played and they would start to kiss.”
She shook her head despondently, reminded him where he was.
“This is Ireland, Hermes. That sort of thing just doesn’t go on in public.”
Though he wasn’t aware of the long and venerable tradition of Irish love poetry, it still seemed incongruous to him that a race so rich in terpsichorean skill would be so inhibited when it came to other kinetic activities.
“So in only goes on in people’s homes, then?” he asked.
She blushed, but not enough to be perceivable in this dim light. Then, conscious of the long journey home, she said, “Some people aren’t able to go home, as their parents wouldn’t approve, so they go and do it anywhere they can, in dark alleys, or in country places like this, in fields and behind ditches.”
It’s hard to describe the combination of shock and titillation that this remark produced. It horrified him that people had to go to such lengths to do something that was so natural, but the idea of having to do things in secrecy appealed to the adventurous side of his nature. Then he stopped, took a look at her face to ascertain whether she had told him that for the reason he imagined. He saw a look that was, in its own way, as unmistakable a sign of a wish for some form of physical communion as a brightening of pubic tissue that our ancestors and some of our simian relatives produce when they desire coitus. She, in turn, sensed that he recognised this, and pulled his hand in the direction of the wall. She released it again to lift her skirt to climb over the wall, which she did with a dexterity that Schillerz could only envy, as if her shoes were only a thin patina on clawed, atavistic feet. She looked down from the top of the wall, a princess with the rough, granite rocks her immutable throne and he her devoted servant to whom she offered her hand n a gesture of royal benediction. He grasped it, then uneasily placed one of his feet in a gap between two rocks. With a strength that surprised him, as of an Amazon warrior or a Xena, she pulled him up the rest of the way, then, with even more astonishing physical adroitness, she seemed to dive off the wall the way a Mexican rock diver would, landed taking all her weight on her wrists, then swung round, lay on the ground with her legs spread just a little, beckoning him to match her agility. He thought about trying for a second or two, but sadly this young man from the land of Kraft durch freude fitness camps was tragically unable to do anything of the sort, whether for fear of hurting her or hurting himself remains a moot point. Anyway, as he crawled down from the wall nervously, she looked less disappointed or angry than stoical, the way a parent who hoped their child would grow up to be a doctor would look when they find out he only has good enough grades to become a lawyer. He, however, was pricked with a sense of shame, a sudden rush of inadequacy, a feeling that he wasn’t good enough for her. Instead of entering into her warm embrace, he merely lay down on the lush grass beside her and, unwilling to confront his shortcomings head-on, came up with, like, a textbook Freudian defence mechanism: “Are you sure your dad won’t get any of those pains of his?” “No”, she replied, looking disillusioned, “He only gets them during the day.”
“Well… won’t he be worried about you?” “Worried about me? Jesus, Hermes, I’m a big girl. I know how to take care of myself. My da is probably gone to sleep, or else he’s relaxing, listening to some music. Anyway, why didn’tcha ask me this before we jumped over the wall?”
He pondered this last inquiry for a few seconds in that typically teutonic way of his, the way that she would find amusingly charming as long as they were in the throes of romantic obsession, and found it’s logic emphatically compelling, in the way a six-year old would his parent’s hurried, illogical responses to his endless `why’s. He didn’t have any real verbal response, and even if he had, it might have been better to save his wisdom for more civilised, less feral surroundings. Just as nature seemed to claw back the walls that humans used to demarcate it, gradually, almost impercetibly encroaching on their walls and turning them into hybrid heaths, it seemed the thick grass and the sound of the crickets in the background drew our hero and heroine into it’s lusty embrace like the gallant knights that tried to rescue the sleeping beauty. Years later, when Schillerz’ hormones loosened their grip on him and he had read far more books than he had now, he thought of how abstract the idea of ferity, of freedom from the constraints of civilisation was, that we needed constraints before we could really appreciate freedom. Perhaps it was this idea that our ancestors had in mind when they came up with the idea of making us spend our adolesences corralled in rooms listening to things we couldn’t care about. Right now, he was that feral creature that he would look back on and analyse like half-time commentators would a particularly ambiguous offside decision.
Why do we analyse our actions so much, provide such specious rationalisations? Why were some of Schillerz’ contemporaries seizing the war as a chance to prove their manhood? Does a dog see a cat passing and think of it as an oppurtunity to prove it’s doghood? Right now, none of this mattered to Schilerz, seized as he was by a febrile, carpe diem opportunism, except that, when he got to the stage where his face was embraced by her warm cushions of mammarial tissue and his fingers were making their way to the moist, pilose orifice between her legs, he suddenly felt compelled, as if by some Sophoclean Daemon to ask:
“Remember when you told me about your `cycle’ before?” She sighed, unaware of what might be causing these uncharacteristic inhibitions, and said, “yes”, but at the same time grabbed hold of his hand and drew it closer to her vulva, in anticipation of the next question.
“So, I guess you’re not at the point of the cycle where you can get pregnant yet?”
“Hermes, we can only get pregnant four days out of every month, but those are the days when we enjoy making love the most. It’s like a cruel joke nature has played on us, making us, or at least me enjoy it so much but then take it away from us when we want it most. Of course, after we reach a certain age we can’t become pregnant anymore but then nobody wants us.” Maybe her real misfortune was to be alive in one of those times when the baby had been taken out of the bath but the bathwater not yet replaced, videlicit, when it was becoming unnecessary and undesireable to have a big family but before the invention of the pill. This was the same time that mass industrialisation was atomising workers but TVs had not yet become affordable. Is it any wonder people thought going off to war would be such a good idea? Here, however, in the neutral island at the heart of man, there was one organ in Schillerz body that was decidedly not neutral, declaring it’s intentions with all the subtlety of an early draft of Mein Kampf, pushing up against the Maginot line of his underwear, seeming to drag all his physical and even mental energy with it, the way armies suck the life out of states in their thrust for conquest. He was willing to accept her assurance without any corroboration. So, once more, he stimulated all of her erogenous zones, by now less like a stout Cortez exploring the jungle than a driver of a school bus picking up all the regular clients on his route. Then she decided it was her turn to take the initiative, and turned over and climbed on top of him, opened his trousers and allowed his swelling, throbbing member to spring out, then pulled up her dress, took off her underwear, and pressed herself around him, pressed her knees into the grass causing two marks that would surely be the subject of debate among the cows in the morning and waited for him to respond, as if too a particularly contentious argument. His response was measured, like a politician who’d paid just enough attention to his spin-doctors to say what people wanted to hear, altering the pace and thrust enough to generate increasing moans and howls, till eventually, against a backdrop of a red sunset, her head leaned back as far as it could go as she screamed in ecstacy, like a fiery dionysian maenad drunk on the richest ambrosial nectar.
She then climbed back off him with an incongruous fuctionality, then lay down on the grass with Schillerz in the hope of communicating with him in the brief window before he started wanting to have sex again. Tragically, or at least pathetically, he just wanted to lie there until he had recovered enough energy to walk home and sleep somewhere comfortable. She accepted this stoically, and allowed him to bask in post-coital ecstacy for a while, while she took a few satisfied deep breaths of her own.
After about five minutes, she thought they should start making tracks, and went about the uneasy task of getting him up.
“Can’t we sleep here?”, he muttered, his face still squeezing his upper arm against the grass.
“Well, you can if you like, rubbing bits of grass from her kneecaps and trying, forlornly, to removing the marks the grass had made in her skin, “But I’m heading home.” He nodded in the most perfunctory way, then, without speaking, held out his hand for her to lift. She gave him a look of slight disdain, then grabbed his hand and jerked him up to his feet with an alacrity that shook the post-coital complacency out of him. Then, without saying a word, she climbed up on top of the wall, looked over her shoulder to beckon him to follow, then lifted up her dress and jumped down the other side, leaning over to beckon Schillerz once more. Then she started walking towards home, followed a few minutes later by Schillerz, moving with the lumbering gait of a first-time marathon runner. She looked down, saw the rips in his pants, evidence of his struggle to climb the wall, then up towards his his eyes, battling against that blissful fatigue that only comes from doing what they were just doing, or maybe from dancing ‘til three o’ clock. He reached out to hold her hand, whether out of affection or a mere desire to stay upright she could not tell. She gave him hers anyway, and they walked home this way, though sadly he still didn’t have all that much to say, other than a few cursory questions about the dance, about the music they were playing, about her friends, which at first she answered with some enthusiasm but gradually realised that he was just asking those questions to keep her talking and abrogate his own conversational responsibilities. She just accepted this, though, considering it a prestigination undeserving of any anger.
When they got home they found Tom asleep in his favourite armchair, a record still spinning around the turntable. Siobhan asked Schillerz to take it off, asked if if he wanted hot chocolate or anything, which he refused, knowing he would fall asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He lifted the needle from the record, took a look at it to see what Tom had been listening to. The record bore the words, in gothic script, Der Tod und Das Madchen. He wondered what melancholy terrors could be drawn from this round piece of vinyl that could deserve such a title, made a mental note to listen to it himself some time. Then Siobhan came in, bearing a cup of Ovaltine for herself, and Schillerz asked her if they should wake Tom up.
“No”, she replied, “he’ll probably wake up after one of nightmares, and even if he doesn’t, it doesn’t get that cold in this house in summer anyway.” “He has nightmares as well?”, asked Schillerz, feeling, perhaps, a new bond with the slumbering mass on the armchair. Siobhan, for her part, was merely moved to ask “As well as who?”
Schillerz, about midway between being surprised and stunned, answered, “Me.”
She nodded nonchalantly, to which he responded, “Couldn’t you tell? Surely I must toss and turn a lot in my sleep?” “Perhaps you do, I can’t really tell, I’m quite a heavy sleeper.”
He wondered how many more such revelations they would each have to make before they could really claim to know each other. But not for very long, as when he got to the bedroom, he just took off his shirt and pants, went under the covers, and fell into a deep, comatose slumber.
The next day, and the days in the weeks that succeeded it, followeed a similar pattern. Schillerz stayed in the house most of the time, enjoyed the cornucopia of aesthetic pleasures that Tom’s living room had to offer. He listened to all sorts of music, from that chilling Schubert quartet to the jauntiest Billie Holliday tunes and the wildest, most atavistic Irish folk music. From Tom he heard all the old Irish legends, about how Finn McCool had accidentally eaten the salmon of knowledge and how Setanta had scored a last-minute goal against the hound of Ulster. He heard tales of Tom’s travels, of fascinating cultural encounters and wild adventures. And he read, voraciously, with the passion of a recent convert to a new religion. He finished off Candide quickly, then he read Goethe, Heine, and his near-namesake Schiller, figures that had been bound and caged in classrooms but now liberated to roam around his mind like freed songbirds on flights of lyricism. He read the Tao, poetry by Blake, Byron and Shelley, Yeats and TS Eliot, Portrait of an Artist and Dubliners, Gulliver’s Travels, the Iliad, the Oddessy and the Aeniad. He discussed them all with Tom, always fascinated by his insights and his revelations. Often, too, Siobhan would surprise him with flashes of brilliance, so much so that he often wished her talents were better put to use, like in a university. Other times, she seemed at home here, teaching him how to milk the cow, how to plant spuds, or just going for walks and teaching him the names of all the flora and fauna. They went to more dances, though, if the truth be told, they weren’t the thing Schillerz looked forward to the most, as Siobhan would never let him reveal too much about himself. For her, it gave him an aura of mystique, but for him it only seemed to emphasise his isolation. He accepted this fate though, not least because, when Siobhan wasn’t either menstruating or putatively ovulating, they fucked like bunnies.
It wasn’t a situation that could last forever, unless this was a fairy tale, or a feel-good Hollywood movie. One day soemthing would have to come along and burst their bubble. Deep down, Schillerz knew this, yet a hedonistic, epicurean spirit kept this knowledge deeply supressed like a bourgeois child with Tourette’s syndrome.
One day, however, he had just finished off reading the Bhagavad-Gita, and was discussing it with Tom, a ritual they had both grown equally enamoured of. This time, however, seemed a little different, as the wide-eyed wonder that seemed to light up Schillerz face as Tom granted him his pearls of wisdom seemed to have dissapated to be replaced by a troubled, yearning angst. Tom tried to exorcise this by explaining what a complex, multi-layered work it was, passed on some of the insights given to him by emaciated Sadhus on Himalayan peaks. This time, though, Schillerz had formed his own interpretation, and didn’t want to know of anyone else’s opinion.
“Krishna’s message is an obvious one, Tom. You have to go along with the Zeitgeist, no matter how fucking horrible it seems. You have to find a role, do what you do best, your dharma. You told me that yourself.” “Yes”, he replied, scratching his beard the way he did when he was making a statement he considered profound, “But there are many ways to interpret this. Remember, the Gita is part of the Maharabata, which is a martial epic...”
“And we’re in the middle of a martial epic called the second world war. I had almost found my dharma by being a spy, except I was spying for the wrong side. I’m Going to have to go back into the war, Tom.”
“Hermes, let me be frank with you. I don’t think that you were that good at your job. I can’t imagine how the abwehr let you do this job, except of course that Ireland is hardly the most important field for espionage.”
Schillerz, whose respect for Tom’s judgment was immutable, merely frowned slightly. Tom continued, “The Nazis are going to lose the war whether you take part in it or not. If you go to England and try to become a spy for MI6 you could be arrested and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp. If you stay here, you can spend the war educating yourself, you can do something useful at the end, become a lecturer in English or in General humanities, something you really enjoy, something worthwhile.”
At this point Schillerz realised what a Galatea he was to Tom’s Pygmalion, or a Daedalus to his Icarus, a Matthew Garth to his Tom Dunson, or a Dolly the Sheep to his bald Scottish scientist guy.
“You’re trying to mould me in your own image, aren’t you?”, he said, a little rashly, only afterwards becoming aware of how hysterical and melodramatic this might have sounded.
Tom’s response was measured, grateful that he didn’t add “Your just as bad as the Nazis”, or anything of that ilk, as he would have done if this was a movie.
“I must admit I’ve come to think of you as a son. I couldn’t have one, though, for reasons I think Siobhan explained to you. Though I’m by no means misogynistic, I have to recognise that our society still very much is.” He gave Schillerz a look that suggested that he had to make his own accomadations with the Zeitgeist. “I’ve often tried to mould Siobhan in my own image, to use your phrase, but I realise that Ireland isn’t a matriarchy as it once was, so it seems so futile. So I’d hate anything bad to happen to you, as spending the next five years with a bunch of Nazis in POW camp in the Scottish highlands would surely be.” He reflected on what an awful image that was, then qualified by saying: “Of course you’re not my son, so I can hardly oppose whatever descision you make. I can only beg you to give it careful contemplation, and reassure you that there is a place for you here until the war finishes.”
This was such a reasonable position that Schillerz found himself unable to vent any more of the spleen that he wanted, which in some ways was not a bad thing as it was directed at himself as much as at Tom, who would be the one to suffer. He took his leave politely, saying he needed some time for private contemplation, to which request Tom assented. He decided to walk down to that old well where siobhan and he had had many a romantic interlude. He passed her on the way out, putting some washing on the line. “Are yeh going for a walk?” she asked, to which he nodded.
“If you wait ten minutes I can come along”, she offered.
He detected a tension in her expression, the sort that can only be relieved by making a major revelation. Nevertheless, he told her that he needed to be by himself for a while. Plato, who was lying down next to Siobhan, sensed he needed to be by himself, and stayed where he was.
On his way to the well, he found it hard to focus with the cacophony that was going on inside his head, especially as the bright summer sun seemed to cause a mild sinus. When he got to the shady copse that grew around the well, he found only an external peace, a disapointing incongruity. With a little more poetic sensibility, he might have noticed some of the wild onion stalks twitch endlessly as if fighting some endless struggle with ground, or realised that under the calm surface there were more organisms than he, or perhaps anyone else, could name, endlessly, tirelessly fighting to preserve this rustic idyll. He lacked this, so instead he thought of his plans for rejoining the war and Tom’s alternative. Yet the conflict was like one of those boring soccer matches where most of the time the ball stays around the centre of the field, as if both arguments were deploying the offside trap with relentless efficiency. he eventually decided he had better make a substitution, and decided to bring Siobhan into play. The contribution to the game was one he could not have expected.
He got home to find Siobhan lying on her bed, twisting her hair, not in that coquettish way he was used to, but tensely, irritibly. Disturbingly, he noticed some hairs of hers on the bed, and feared the worst. He noticed a darkening of her eyes and an uncharacteristic sallowness in her cheeks. Though it pained him to do so, he told her: “I had some things I wanted to discuss with you, but I get the impression you also have some things on your mind.” “What sort of things?”, she asked, unexpectedly.
“Well... I don’t know if I can stay here much longer when...”
“I’m not sure if I can stay here much longer either”, she said in a voice doom-laden like a character in an Edgar Allen Poe tale.
“Why not?”, he asked, feeling surprised and not a little irritated.
“Because I’m late”, she replied, perhaps on some level aware that Schillerz would not know what this statement portended.
“Late for what?”, he asked, tentatively, like a Polynesian peasant aware on some deep, visceral level that a volcano was about to erupt.
“Late for my fucking period, you stupid fucking eejit.”
Unfortunately for Schillerz, he still didn’t know what this meant, and Siobhan could tell.
“My time of the month? My monthlies? My women’s problems?” Recognising that he still wasn’t quite sure what was going on, she grabbed her crotch and said, “I haven’t bled down here for five weeks. You know what that means?”
Tragically, he didn’t, and this was made evident by his hesitant expression.
“It means I’m fucking pregnant, that’s what it fucking means. I’m going to have a fucking baby in the next eight fucking months. So either you marry me, I go to England, or one of those Magdelen hell-holes. So why do you want to leave, then, pretty-boy?”
When he got enough composure together, he said: “I don’t think that’s so important right now. How do you think this happened?”
Though she knew what he meant, in her anger she could not resist the temptation to indulge in some salient sarcasm. After getting an impromptu lecture in human reproduction, which he patiently listened to, he asked:
“What about your cycle? I thought you knew what days you could get pregnant and not?”
“Well, apparently the rhythm method isn’t infallible after all, Hermes.”
“So what do you think you should do?” At this question her anger turned to fear. She burst into tears, said “I don’t know what to do. And I don’t think you know either.” In a desperate, doomed attempt to comfort her, he made the following offer:
“Well, I could marry you if it would help.”
“Oh, Great idea”, she replied, sarcastically. “I’m sure you’ve got your birth cert and maybe your abwehr papers in there somewhere. You know, the local priest is sooo eager to marry off pregnant girls to protestant nazi spies.”
It didn’t escape Schillerz’ attention that she said `protestant’ before `nazi’, but he deemed it unworthy of comment.
“Well... it wouldn’t be that hard to falsify documents, would it?”, he asked, as tentatively as he was able.
“This isn’t the thirty nine fucking steps, Hermes. This is reality. Things just don’t work out that simply.”
“Well... maybe not, but I’ve heard of people do things like that and get away with it.”
In a slightly calmer tone, apparently impressed by his genuine attempts to comfort her, she explained: “I don’t think you understand what people are like here, Hermes. They’re so inquisitive, and officuous, and gossipy... No matter what part of Ireland you say you’re from, they’ll know someone who lives there, you’ll get caught out after a while, end up in a POW camp, while I end up being brutalised and...” She looked down towards her stomach, feared the fate worse than abortion that faced the new life inside her, and placed her head on Schillerz’ chest and started to cry. Realising there was nothing he could say or do to comfort her, he just let her cry the pain out for as long as it took, which was quite a while. Inevitably, one thorny question would have to raise it’s ugly head.
“Have you told your father about this yet?”
“Actually, that’s the least of my worries in a way but... I have this fantasy that he might have a solution and I’m afraid that when I confront him he won’t know any better than you or me what to do.”
“I see... well, he had problems bringing you into the world, and you turned out alright.”
She gave him a look that recognised his good intentions but allowed him to realise what a patronisingly glib statement they had inspired, though an apology seemed uncalled for.
“Well, he’s going to find out sooner or later, the longer he’s aware of this the more time he has to formulate a solution.”
It was a small crumb of comfort, though, strangely, she was more cheered by Schillerz’ faith in her father than inspired to share it.
“I suppose it’s better that I tell him myself than that he finds out second hand. Oh Lord, I hope he can think of something.”
“I’m sure he can but...”
“But what?” “But we’ll never be able to live the life we’re living now again.”
She nodded stoically, her face blackened with tears, her hair frazzled, like a rose which had been plucked and was starting to lose it’s petals, and could never be retuned to the soil from which it sprung. Yet she saw a look in his eyes that informed her that, whatever else happened, she was not going to be deserted. It was a strange comfort to know that if she was going to get impregnated by a Protestant Nazi spy, then Schillerz would have been the one to choose.
Schillerz comforted her physically for a while, taking care not to do anything that might lead to greater intimacy and the comcomitant impression of taking advantage of her plight. Then they discussed when would be the best time to tell her father. Schillerz didn’t think there was any time to waste, while Siobhan thought it might be better to wait ‘till he had had dinner. Her opinion was allowed to prevail, after which there followed a long, Becketian silence, in which they lay like broken halves of a Platonic sphere.
After a while, she said in a voice transformed by the consciousness of pregnancy, rather than the pregnancy itself, into that of a jaded, world-weary middle-aged woman, “I suppose I’d better go down and make the dinner.”
Schillerz, eager to help in any way he could, interjected with: “I can cook if you want.” As jaded and enervated as she was, she was not sure she could trust Schillerz with this task, and didn’t want to confront her father with her bad news after he’d been improperly fed.
“I’m not sure you’re a good enough cook. Me da is pretty fussy, y’know. So am I actually,” she added, as if this was a cause for guilt.
“Well, I’ve been watching you cook some days, and I’m learning a lot. I think I might be able to do a biryani. They seem pretty straightforward.”
The decision to give him her acquiesence seemed not to have been made in her brain, but in her weary, aching limbs. She nodded gently, rationalising that the biggest botch Schillerz made of the dinner could not be worse than the torture of having to drag herself out of bed and face the array of ingredients needed to make the perfect biryani. She checked that Schillerz was aware of what all those ingredients were, then gave him her final approval, raising her hand like an Umbrian farmer saying, “One day son, all of this will be yours.”
He went down to the kitchen with an elan that his fear of becoming a father could mollify but not eliminate. He walked past the living room without saluting Tom, wanting the dinner to be a surprise.
He looked round the kitchen which had briefly become his domain, not stopping to think what an irony this was, as more than one man has got a woman pregnant in order to have someone else to do this sort of stuff. He took out the olive oil out of the drawer, smelt it’s magical odour, allowed it to waft through his nose like the most meretricous oenophile. He drained the basmati rice lovingly, almost, he almost thought, like washing a baby. He chopped the onions like he had been doing it all his life, then, with a dexterity that surprised even himself, picked all the spices from the spice rack, and added them, grinding the ones that needed to be ground like some pagan deity breathing life onto the earth. Then he added the vegetables, and then the rice, by which time the odours had found their mellifluous way to the living room. A minute or so later, Tom had followed them into the kitchen, where he greeted Schillerz with the words: “Well, my love, it seems your treating your father to one of his favourite dishes”, and reached over to embrace him but, with a shudder, realised who he was.
“Hermes! Have you decided that your dharma is not war but cookery?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that... Siobhan isn’t feeling so well and I thought I would save her the bother.”
“Not feeling well?” Schillerz suddenly realised he had dug a hole for himself, as Tom continued: “What’s the matter with her?” “Oh..well... she’s sort of... under the weather.” “Women’s problems?” Tom asked hopefully? Schillerz gulped, perceptibly, said, “You could say that.” “Well, she’ll be able to come down and have dinner alright?” “Oh, yes, that won’t be a problem. You might call her right now, as I’m nearly ready.” It didn’t take him very long to establish dominion over this realm, it seems.
Tom went out to call his daughter, when she didn’t reply at first he thought of going up to see what was wrong, but then he heard the creaking door signify that she was at least well enough to come downstairs. When he saw her dishevelled face, her tear-browned face and her lugubrious gait, he guessed that the weather she was under was either a monsoon or a parching heat-wave.
“My love, what’s become of you? I haven’t seen you look so bad since you got the mumps as a child.” Schillerz looked over at her, beckoning her to ease the tension by admitting what had happened. She seemed determined to stick to her original plan, however.
“I’m Okay. Just a touch of flu, I think.”
Tom, who had seen more flu’s than she’d had hot dinners, was suspicious, but did not want to trouble her in her current state. “Well, it seems Hermes has cooked a meal with plenty of Vitamin C in it, right Hermes?” Schillerz nodded, though he didn’t really know what Vitamin C was or where it might be found. He served the dinner, watching the reactions of Tom, who was watching Siobhan’s face for any signs of brightening, but which seemed to wear an immutable, pachydermous tragic mask for the course of the meal. Schillerz was mildly frustrated that Tom showed no signs of appreciating his cookery, but allowed his sympathy for Siobhan to take precedence.
When the meal ended, she turned to him and said, listed, da, there’s something we need to tell you.” Then she looked over at Schillerz and asked him, in a slighlty peremptory tone to make them some camomile tea. He did so, but with slighty less effort than he had put into the dinner.
He brought them in a to the living room a few minutes later, found Siobhan deeply embedded in one of the armchairs, twisting her hair neurotically, while he leaned forward eagerly, desperate to know what the matter was. Schillerz handed them both the tea, then sat in a nervous position on the edge of one of the other seats. Tom looked round at them both and asked how much longer they would be kept in suspense. While Tom and Schillerz looked on eagerly, Siobhan twisted her hair, pressed her fingers against her forehead, bit her fingernails, rubbed her head against her shoulder, and finally, hastily, said, “I’m pregnant.”
Tom took her hand and grasped it gently, said, “Oh, my love. Oh dear.” He looked over at Schillerz, asked if it was his, recieved a grimacing nod. Tom paused a while, asked how it happened, Siobhan responded with the sort of gesticulations that seem to try and draw answers from the air. Finally she offered, “I don’t know. I must have been ovulating early.” She added that it was her own fault, that Schillerz hadn’t made any unreasonable demands of her, which was judicuous but a comfort to no-one.
Tom scratched his beard, admitted that he didn’t really know what to do, that he would have to give it some thought. He reassured them that they would have his support no matter which course of action they pursued, for which genororisy he was rewarded with a warm embrace from his daughter. Then he sipped some camomile tea, reflected on the bitter irony that the man he had chosen to become his son manquee was now poised to become the father of his grandchild.
Then he asked to be left alone to think about this for a while. As the young ones reluctantly left the room, he asked if one of them could get his records of Brahms 2nd and 3rd, the music that helped him think in these situations. Dutifully, Siobhan bent down to pick them out from the cupboard beneath the bookshelves. Schillerz looked guiltily away, trying to repress the lust that had gotten him and the woman he loved into such trouble. This gratified Tom’s sense of irony rather than amused him. Siobhan went over to the turntable, checked the needle was Okay and dropped on on the record, walked over to her father to kiss him goodnight as the lush opening chords filled the room. Schillerz looked on, feeling like a superfluous encumberment, which is what he would be if he belonged to a lot of species. Going up the stairs, he was unsure if Siobhan wanted to make any physical contact or not, he felt generally awkward around her, the way a teenage boy does around a girl he has an unrequited crush on. Siobhan sensed this, and asked: “Hermes, why don’t you hold my hand?”
“Well... I wasn’t sure that’s what you’d want.”
“Of course it is. I need someone to support me right now. I need to feel that you won’t desert me.”
“Of course I won’t. You know you don't need to worry.” With those words he took hold of her hand and entered the bedroom.
This, sadly for Schillerz, was another realm of gauche awkwardness.
“So what do you want to do now”, he asked.
“I just want to be by myself for a while.”
“Okay, I’ll just go into the other bedroom, then.”
“No, I mean... I want to be by myself but... I need you here... I just need privacy... I need to think by myself, not to talk... Stay here... please... can you?”
“You want me to stay here?” “Yes but... not to talk, or to do anything else. I just need you here.”
It seemed like a strange request, but not one he felt he could refuse. He watched her light a candle, creating a dim hue which seemed to cast her furrowed features into a more gentle light. Then she lay down on the bed, beckoned him to join her. It was a slightly frustrating position for him, trying to figure out what was going on behind that newly grim facade, while trying to clarify his own feelings simultaneously. It made him conscious of how little he understood about her, and about himself, how futile the idea of intellectual union was.
After about an hour of this fraught, silent neurosis, when he variously imagined the horrors of POW camps and Magdelen laundries, fantasised himself taking his son (he never imagined it would be a girl) for treks in the Bavarian alps, and concocted all sorts of hare-brained schemes to get themselves out of this mess, they heard a knock on the door. It was, as it could only be, Tom.
Schillerz got up to answer.
“Hey, Hermes, come on downstairs, bring Siobhan too. I’ve thought of a way to solve this wretched problem.”
Schillerz’ eyes lit up, while Siobhan, still on the bed, adopted a look of mere sceptical optimism, and dragged herself up. They followed him downstairs as if being led by an Amerindian shaman in a tribal rain dance. When they got to the living room, Tom beckoned them hurriedly to sit down, then started his spiel.
“Okay, here’s what you should do. It’s just my advice, of course. If you can think of something better then... well by all means. I’m going to get a phone line installed in this house. It shouldn’t take more than a month, no-one will know Siobhan’s pregnant by then. So if I get any of my pains, I can call a nurse, and someone to cook my dinner. In the meantime, you two go up to Dublin, you can stay there for a few days, then get the ferry over to Holyhead, and make your way down to London from there. Schillerz, with your knowledge of German you should be able to get a job in espionage, which is what you wanted to do anyway.” Those last words prompted Siobhan to look at Schillerz askew, but she tried to focus on the bigger picture. “That way you can support Siobhan, when the war is over you can either go back to Germany or come back here, though you’ll either have to get married, or adopt British citizenship. Hopefully I’ll still be alive to see my little grandson when the war is over.” With those last words he had to swallow a gulp.
Schillerz shook his head, trying to take all of this in.
“I suppose we could do all of that but... what if the British intelligence think I’m a Nazi spy?”
“That’s a risk you have to take. But when they look through your stuff, and find banned books like Ulysses, that risk will be minimised.”
Schillerz admired the thoroughness of his plan, then looked over at Siobhan, to see what her opinion was.
“Well, if we do this, how do I know that I’ll ever see you again, da?” “You don’t. You just have to live in hope. But if you go to one of those laundries, your hope is gone. Anyway, you’ve probably spent enough of your life with me already, and you’ll have another month to discuss any unresolved issues we might have between us.” She admired his magnanimity, but there was one issue on which she wanted immediate closure.
“So, if you’re confident a nurse could take care of you, why have you kept me around the house so long?”
He adopted a look of melancholy stoicism, a look that suggested that he had expected this question for a long time.
“Well, you’re my only child. Your mother is dead, and once you go away, I have no-one to bond with. I knew this day would come, sooner or later, but... I left enough money in my will for you to do whatever you wanted with your life... If I was still alive by the time you got to thirty...” he raised his arm the way someone would releasing a dove from captivity, then nervously awaited Siobhan’s response ro this latest revelation.
It could have been an angry one, but her reaction to the news that he had planned to keep her around the house for another seven years was measured and respectful.
“Well, I suppose.. the best laid plans of mice and men... But surely you knew you were going to last at least another seven years?” “I’m not so sure... these pains I’ve been having, I’m sure they could be the prelude to something worse, although no doctor I’ve seen will predict that, none of them are willing to rule it out... anyway, the point is that I knew this day would come eventually... it’s not about me anymore, it’s about getting you and Hermes to safety. So do you think this plan could work?”
“Well, I just reprimanded Hermes for a plan that was too spy novel.” She looked over at Schillerz, who was blushing slightly. “But I think this one may work. And, like you say, I don’t have much of a choice.” She looked over at Schillerz, as if passing an invisible baton to him.
“Well, I can’t let her go to England by herself, I can’t stay here, I can’t go back to Germany, I guess I’ve got no real choice.” Tom responded with a wry smile, Siobhan with the gentlest of embraces.
“I suppose that means you’ll have to go to Dublin to make arrangements to have a phone installed. You’ve never been to Dublin, have you, Hermes?”
Schillerz responded to Tom’s question with an ironic shake of his head.
“I’m interested to know what you make of it. There’s a few friends of mine there I’d like you to check up on. It might be a good idea to book your ferry tickets while you’re there as well.”
Schillerz reflected on how little time or debate it took to resolve this issue, the finality and totality contrasting so saliently with the aleatory, arbitrary circumstances that brought him to this position. It was a decision he would think about for the rest of his life, but then they would still be talking about the current war when everyone in this room had crossed the Styx.
“Dublin. What’s it like, Tom?”, he replied, implicitly accepting Tom’s strategy by doing so.
“Well, you read Dubliners and Portrait of an artist, didn’t you?”
Schillerz nodded.
“They give you a good impression of what the city is like. Overwhelmingly gloomy in some ways, but with a humour and a spirit that generally keeps the people going. I’m not sure what you’d make of it, having been to places like Munich and Hamburg. When I went there first, as a teenager, it seemed like this huge, grey metropolis, since then I’ve travelled the world and now it seems like a faded, jaded, former imperial outpost that hasn’t quite decided what it wants to become in the future.”
In the days before Schillerz got a chance to make up his own mind, he felt he had been cast in some strange limbo, but he always reaasured himself that his own uncertainty paled before that of his compatriots on the eastern front.

They got a train to Dublin a few days later, Siobhan’s handbag bulging with adresses and shopping requests. The train contained an eclectic mixture of people, from farmers going to the city to petition their local TDs to members of the old Anglo-Irish gentry going up town for the weekend to see some plays in the Gaiety. Younger, Irish people as well, hardy sons of the soil trying, forlornly, to look respectable as they headed for the ferry at Dun Laoghaire to face more toil in the building sites of London. Or perhaps face Schillerz’ compatriots in North Africa, in a bitter struggle to the death. He looked at their sullen faces, their hastily combed fringes and their spasmodic, Kalaharian stubble, wondered how any of them would react if they knew he was, the rallies he’d been to, the propaganda he’d listened to, or even if they could hear what he was thinking, in the language of his ancestors.
Then he noticed another young Irish person. Well, not so young, maybe someone in his late twenties who didn’t drink, smoke or eat red meat. A frustrated intellectual, perhaps, with a penetrating stare and and endless range of histrionic gesticulations, running his fingers through his unusually long, curly hair, biting his nails, constantly avoiding eye contact with other passengers, as if his penetrative gaze might turn them, medusa-like, to stone. Schillerz wondered why this person was taking such an interest in him, or perhaps the uberfraulien sitting next to him. Perhaps he was a shy, nervous type who wondered how a beauty like Siobahn would end up with a person like himself. Or maybe there was something more, something in his glance that suggested that there was a deep bond between him and Schillerz. For almost the whole duration of the journey, most of which Siobhan spent asleep, he alternated between looking out at the mountains and the bogs, the fields and the hedgerows, and at this strange charcacter. When the train finally passed through all the lush fields and dismal suburbs, he watched him get off, turn his head back towards Schillerz and Siobhan, with a pessimistic, Cassandra-like expression that seemed to warn Schillerz of catastrophes ahead, then dissapear into the throng of hurried, disparate passengers.
Siobhan noticed the glance as well, asked Schillerz who this person was. He answered honestly that he didn’t know, and acted as if he would never think about it again. He started to take in the sights, the stalls selling heavily censored newspapers, the cafes selling tea at vastly inflated wartime prices, the ruddy-faced beggars lying against the walls with caps forlornly soliticing farthings, the nuns with their pious expressions from whom Siobhan flinched nervously, fee;ing like Mick Collins walking past RIC members twenty years before the ragged posters advertising things Schillerz could not imagine many of the people around him affording.
They made their way out of the station, hailed a taxi. A cab driven by a middle-aged, greying, dolichocephalic man opened it’s doors to them.
“So where would youse fine young people be headin’, then?”, they were asked, in an accent Schillerz had never heard before, full of the lugubrious weltschermz that one would imagine a grey city like this inspiring.
“Dublin Castle, please”, requested Schillerz, meekly.
“Oh, so youse are gettin married, or maybe youse are buyin’ a house for yourselves.”
Siobhan tittered, and Schillerz said, “Not quite. We’re just trying to have a telephone installed in her father’s house.”
“Ah well, I don’t blame youse folks for puttin’ off the big day. Times is uncertain, what with this Hitler marchin’ into every county in Europe. They say there’s every possibilty that England could fall in the next few months, and then we’ll all be speakin’ German and doing the goose step. You wouldn’t think of heading over there to help out with the war effort, would ya?”
“Actually, I’m going to go over there within the next month.” “Good for you, boy. But tell you what, you’d want to marry this young one before you head over there, else you never know what’ll happen.”
Siobhan smiled embarresedly, but Schillerz, who had still not got the hang of the whole piss-taking, ball-hopping thing, held her close. The driver realised he had touched a raw nerve and opted to keep his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel. Schillerz marvelled at the wild incongruities of the city, the augustan architecture and the dull grey skies behind it, the green, putrescent river and the elegnant little bridges across which a constant stream of hurried people crossed, making Schillerz think of TS Eliot’s allusions to Dante. So, this was the Styx, they were up from the sticks, the smell sticks in their throat, makes them sick.
Finally, they arrived at the castle. To Schillerz, it seemed less of a castle in the way he understood the term, one of Ludwig II’s flamboyant, Wagnerian collections of spires and butresses, than the stately, sombre headquarters of a North Sea trading guild in in Hamburg or Rostock. He watched the beurocrats strut round like ruddy-faced peacocks, wondered how many of them got where they were by fighting the perfidious Sasanach in muddy bogs, though if he thought about it long enough, he’d realise that nobody ever gets into a position of power without either they or their ancestors causing some horrible pain to someone weak and vulnerable. He didn’t as he had other things on his mind, like getting that telephone installed. They finally found the relevant office, what Dickens might have called an eternity room, or Munch in his youth painted as a gloomy limbo, except he would have used a broader range of colours. Schillerz wondered by what osmotic process the colour drained from the clothes and buildings and streets and the sky over Dublin and into their faces and the river that ran lugubriously through their grey city. But then he hadn’t been inside a Catholic church, just one of those dark grey places where a small number of poorly trained civil servants ran the lives of everyone else in the country. They asked what desk they were to make their inquiry at, and pointed towards a room where other respectable, middle class types like themselves were waiting for service, holding briefcases and handbags and other signifiers of their alpha status in the community, most of whom would be aghast to learn that the new status symbol which they were trying to acquire would one day be thrown to the hoi-polloi along with their cars and their foreign holidays, with any Tom, Dick or Harry able to walk into a shop in any town in the country and come out with a phone they could walk around with and take onto busses and annoy all the other passengers. For now though, they remained safe in their bourgois cocoons where poverty would only ever come up to them on the street and ask for a few bob and be brushed aside just as easily.
He watched some money changing hands over the counter, and thought this would be a good moment to ask about the money here, which, like some travelling mendicant monk, he had managed to get by without. Casting her eyes around the room to make sure this action would invite no suspicion, she took out some change and some notes, explained the labyrinthine monetary system that her compatriots had inherited and still shared with their former imperial overlords. It took him quite a while, in particular, to get used to the idea that their were units of currency that were worth one nine-hundred-and-sixtieth of a basic unit. He held one of the coins in his hand, a part of that stable currency that held it’s value while the Rentenmark imploded and the Bundesmark fluctuated like a weathercock in a stormy north sea port. He held a half-crown in his hand, imbuing it’s slighty rusting cupro-nickel verecundity with the stability it represented, and that of the nation that produced it, that remained intact through two reichs and a republic came and went in his homeland, the country that had always been the desired ally of his former fuehrer and his Kaiser before him, that sucked the life out of Bengal, Southern Africa, and the island that now kept his feet from getting wet while it’s aristocrats argued about what time to have there afternoon tea, which left it’s undelible mark on the city he now sat in like the stump of a willow tree in the middle of a field of potatoes. And this is the country to which he was now going to have to flee, like many from this unfortunate island in the past, present, and the future.
Another one of his reveries, inspired, no doubt by a conversation with Tom. It was brought to an end by Siobhan, who was bored enough to wander into such reveries, but being the loquacious young thing she was, wanted to have one aloud.
“You seem really fascinated by that half-crown.”
“Oh, well, not in the coin itself, more what it represents for me.”
She nodded, preffering to enunciate one of her own currency-related themes, though this one also came from the mercurial mind of her father, who seemed to linger behind all their discourse like a Hobbesian Leviathan or a Hitchcokian camera eye.
She took the coin in her hand, and said: “Me da says one day we’ll all have the same currency all over Europe, or at least Western Europe.” Schillerz gave the same look of respectful inquistiveness that he would have afforded her father, as if he was some roman augerer picking over the entrails of a cadver to divine messages from the omniscient gods.
“Oh, yeah, he was saying that as early as a hundred years ago, people in your country realised that the major powers in this century would be the US and Russia, and that the only way Europe could maintain it’s position would some form of monetary union. Unfortunately, people from your country have only ever tried to impose it by force, while people from other countries, like Aristide Briand, have suggested something more consensual. He thinks it’ll happen in the decades after the war, though only after endless bickering and horse-trading.”
“And what does he think this new currency will be called?” “I don’t know. The Euro, maybe. Or something more imaginitive.”
She put the half crown back in her pocket, it’s brief, radient career as a muse for reflections on political and economic history being brought to an abrubt stop, dooming it to return to a life of being exchanged for packets of wild woodbine and sacks of kerr pinks before being melted down to be made into a shiny new ten pence piece, or, if it was really lucky, find it’s way into the collection of a sullen, bespectacled numismatist.
They made their way to the top of the queue, each succesive seat given up to them like a piece of feudal fealty by their predessors. After another wait which they endured in silence like mourners at athe funeral of a wealthy but unloved relative, they were beckoned to a desk behind which a balding, bespectacled, beaurocrat sat.
“How may I be of assistance”, he asked, in that peculiar, affected tone of voice in which Dublin civil servants spoke.
“We wish to get a phone installed as soon as possible.”
Without giving any verbal reply, he took some documents from one of the piles next to him and started to ask him questions, writing down his answers in a steady, laboured handwriting. When he had gotten Tom’s name and address, he asked if Schillerz was “said person” Schillerz replied that he wasn’t but that Siobhan was his daughter.
“And what relation would you be to her?”, he asked, in an officously inquistive tone which contorted his by no means handsome face into a ferret-like, Uriah Heep expression.
“He’s my fiancee”, blurted Siobhan, at which Schillerz remained impassive and the beaurocrat’s suspicion mellowed into mere disdain, more the disdain of the old and decaying for the young and beautiful than that of the urbanite for his bucolic cousins, Schillerz reckoned. He made a request for the cost of telephone installation, and Schillerz handed it over, his unfamiliarity with the Irish coinage not escaping the civil servants attention. He counted the money with a Scrooge-like avarice, though to Schillerz, not a great reader thus far of Dickens, it seemed more like a Semitic character from a film back home. Finally, he asked if there were any additional details which would make it easier to find the house. Siobhan gave him a detailed description of it’s whereabouts which he transcribed as if performing a labour of Hercules.
Parenthetically, have you noticed how recent avatars of the Hercules myth have emphasised his physical strength at the expense of the obvious guile which is what allows him to complete all those tasks in the original myths? The emphasis on physicality is a bit disturbing to me, as it probably is to many other scrawny intellectual vegans who can only think of those battery hens every time they see a Sinous Scwharzneger or a Strapping Stallone on the silver screen. I’m also of the belief that our current fixation with the physical dates back to the nazis. But then, while you probably have no idea what Schillerz looks like without his clothes on, I spent pages describing Siobhan’s body. Does this make me a sexist? It’s the sort of question that keeps me up at night.
Anyway, when the sullen civil servants sissyphean subserviences were succesfully sealed, he assured them without making any pretence at enthusiasm that their phone would be installed within three weeks. The smiles that this announcement provoked didn’t inspire any concomitant satifaction in their interlocuter, at least none they could percieve behind his furrowed, receding brow. They left the building, waving him goodbye, to which he responded with a dismissive nod that belied less the knowledge that his low-level beaurocratic job could affect the lives of hundreds of people than the awareness that anybody else from the same social class with two brain cells to rub together could do the same job.
“So, in three weeks, we’ll be able to get out of here. No-one will know I’m pregnant by then”, Siobhan told Schillerz, in a hushed tone, but with a palpable, almost immanent relief, as they walked into the courtyard. “I suppose we can go to buy those ferry tickets now.”
“Yes, I supose so, though maybe it would be better to wait for a month.”
“So, you’ve realised that we’re not that punctual here, huh?”
He gave an ironic nod, then asked where they would have to go to collect the tickets. She told him they would probably have to get the bus to Dun Laoghaire and buy the tickets there. They made their way down to the river, through the grey streets where they passed Dubliners of all ages, social classes and genders, yet who all seemed to be dressed uniformly in black. Schillerz heard snatches of conversation here and there, though he found the accent thick and impenetrable like the stew he had tried to eat on his first day on this island. Ocassionally they got a second glance from the odd passer-by, though Schillerz assured himself that they were provoked by Siobhan’s beauty rather than his unheimliceid. Yet when they got to the bus stop and waited a few minutes for their conduit to a safer, less fearful life to come along, he felt his otherness more sharply. On the bus, he picked up more of the conversations, and heard about Dublin GAA, the inferior quality of guiness in England, the level of rationing for various household goods, and realised that in his rustic ivory tower he had learned nothing of any of these things, a bit like some of the tourists and students in the years to come.
They got past, with the tortuously slow pace that one would have done on a CIE bus at that time all the bustling city streets, then the smoky factory chimneys and the containers by the river, through some stately suburbs and salacious slums to the port. When the bus expurgated them , he could not fail to notice the containers that seemed bound for the same place as them. Why were they still exporting food, as they were in the famine, when people at home had to get by on mere rations? As both sides in the current world conflict embraced market capitalism with the same zeal, the question was as academic as asking how many angels could dance on a pinhead, or what lenght of skirt they were wearing.
They found the ticket office with surprising ease, as if the only thing the government of this country was willing to facilitate was emigration. Inside, they got suspicous glances from working class Irish men, who were heading over to the factories of Liverpool and Manchester to find employment that proved so elusive here. They suspected, perhaps, that these were a middle-class Irish couple who would step on the train to London for a weekend of culture and sightseeing about which they would boast about for weeks to their bourgeois friends. If only they knew what horrible fears were driving them here. After another encounter with someone who would rather be doing a different job, they got their tickets, looked at their watches and realised they would have some time to spare before they got the train home.
On the bus back to the centre of Dublin they decided what to do with their free time. Schillerz wanted to see some of the pubs that were mentioned in Portrait of an Artist, though Siobhan warned him that, in this age when Joyce was still reviled by his compatriots, they would not be easy to find. Siobhan wanted to go to the National Gallery, and maybe squeeze in a bit of shopping while they were in the city. With a combination of Teutonic efficiency and magnanimous generosity, Schillerz worked out a rota that would satisfy both of them. Siobhan smiled, realising that cohabitant life with him would be less of an ordeal than the clerically sanctified marraiges of many. She put her head on his shoulder as he looked, fascinated out the window of the bus.
They got to do most of the things they wanted to do, rushing around the way daytrippers usually do, Schillerz indulging Siobhan while she tried on dresses and stuff, even examining some of the fabrics himself to see how they compared with the things girls wore at home, getting a few suspicious glances for his pains. In a concession to Schillerz’ desire to do a bit of erstwhile Joyce tourism, they wandered round the august buildings at Trinity where the great man’s weltanschauung was formulated. They made it to the National Gallery as well, where the plump, delicate female charcaters in the Vermeers reminded Schillerz of a certain someone and the Steens made him deliberate on how a maritime imperial outpost could become a place of almost vulgar opulence in the space of half a century. 17th Century Amsterdam, that is.
And finally, they got to drink in one of the pubs mentioned in Portrait of an Artist, probably Ulysses, which Schillerz hadn’t gotten round to reading yet. It didn’t make much of it right now, though in the future there would be drawings and photos of the afformentioned belletrist hanging from the walls with other Irish heroes like Jack Charlton and a website with a link to doublelin.com and a group package for Bloomsday. It dissapointed Schillerz, who half-expected to be confronted by a gracile, bespectacled student and engaged in an erudite discourse about Aristotolean dialectics. Instead, there were just a few corpulent old men talking about the same things Schillerz had heard about on the bus. He kept his ears pricked up, as it were, for any mention of the war and what ordinary people here thought of what was going on in Germany as they sipped the frothy heads from their pints of Guiness. Yet he heard so little of insight that he was lest to believe that their brows had furrowed and their hairs greyed in vain. On the train home, while Siobhan thought about how good her new clothes would look at the next dance, this thought brought him endless disspointment, though later on he would realise that for every Joyce, or, for that matter, every Goethe or Schiller, thousands would live a life of unrewarding toil, brightened only by alcohol, football and maybe the odd shag. Perhaps, he too, needed the kairos that this Odyssean or Dantean venture into the underworld offered, for the next month he would labour only in his mind.
The rest of the train journey home was a lethargic affair, with Schillerz sitting on the right hand side of the train, watching the sun go down behind an erubescent sky, the same sun that would go down on his compatriots a few hours later, in many of their cases for the last time. When they got off the train, they felt that familiar feeling of isolation that rural people get when they step off a bus or a train or an auto-rickshaw from the city, a deafening silence punctuated by the odd forlorn caracole of a horse and cart or the tintinabulation of crickets reminding them that the place was as densly inhabited as any, just by members of different species. It was a long, lonely, slog back to the house, with our protagonists each too lethargic to strike up much of a conversation, their shopping bags making grooves in their hands, the sort that you can percieve fading away like steam from a kettle or the dimminuendo at the end of a Wagnerian overture or passionate youthful convictions.
When they finally got to the front door of the house, the sound of Siobhan’s shopping bags hitting the floor, or maybe her keys making their awkward passage from her handbag to the keyhole, alerted Tom to return of the native and the etranger to his humble abode. He rushed to the door with an eagerness that was a bit disconcerting considering how little time his daughter had been away. It would have been disconcerting to Schillerz to think how this sagacious, crypto-shamen was unreconciled to the idea of losing his daughter for a long time, how far he was from achieving nirvana or ataraxia, inducing the sort of feelings a five-year-old feels when he realises his father isn’t infallible or those of a sophomore who finds out his favourite lecturer is an alcoholic, if he wasn’t so wasted from the train journey himself.
Tom hugged his daughter, and the prospective father of his granchild, the way only a homosexual or a heterosexual who was completely comfortable with his heterosexuality could. He beckoned them to come and sit down in the living room, where they entrenched themselves as if on the Somme. He asked them if they wanted tea, herbal tea, or hot chocolate, and went into the kitchen to comply with their requests.
He came back a few minutes later, bearing hot steaming mugs that they seemed to desire the way parched, cracking soil desires water. He waited ‘till Siobhan had tasted the revivifying beverage he supplied her with before tentatively asking her if she’d managed to find the books, magazines and records he’d been looking for. This sent her scurrying, ferret-like around her shopping bags, after which she produced, like some low-rent illusionist or amateur alchemist, copies of Dublin Opinion, The New Statesman, The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, Sight and Sound, The Manchester Guardian, a copy of Murphy by Samuel Beckett, a couple of discs of FÜrtwanger conducting Beethoven, and some by Count Basie and Billie Holiday. It was the recordings by the the naiad from upper Manhattan that excited him most, almost the way that the original denizens of that island would have been by the trinkets bequested them by machoistic conquistors. He took it gently from it’s sleeve as if performing some sacred Hindu ceremony, looking upon the glazed vinyl the way the monkeys do at that smooth-surfaced thing in 2001. He got the turntable going, drew her mellow, ethereal song from the disc, asked as he was doing so what his guest made of his capital city.
“Oh, well, it’s...” he struggled to squeeze his variegated impressions of the city into one succinct sentence, then, quickly realising what a forlorn task this was, just finished with: “an experience”
“That it is”, replied Tom in a slightly dissapointed tone, as he returned to his seat and started flicking through the magazines that his daughter brought him, with the same wide-eyed wonder that a child opens it’s christmas presents, his enthusiasm only dampened by the odd missing article which had fallen victim to the censor’s zealous scalpel. “So, you got everything done I wanted, then?”
“Yes”, replied Schillerz, surprised at the casual, throwaway nature of this remark, pleasantly surprised that he should place such implicit trust in a recent renegade. As he was clearly not cognisant of Desdamona’s father’s look to her moor if thou hast eyes to see advice, whether out of naiveté or profound psychological insight, Schillerz replied that the phone would be there within a fortnight and a half if the department of posts and telegraphs were as good as their word. Tom nodded, lifting his eyes from the marasmic pages of the Statesman in the most perfunctory way, asking him if their tickets for the ferry had also been purchased, in a way that, and maybe I’m being a bit presumtuous here, that he was ever so slightly in denial about the whole emigration thing. Schillerz took the tickets out of his pocket, sullen, nondescript, pieces of paper that would provide a conduit to a different life, perhaps a better one, and waved them in Tom’s general direction. It was an innapropriate gesture, as Tom remained stuck transfixedly in the pages of his magazine. After a few seconds of awkward silence he emerged, a bit like Martin Sheen raising his head from the lagoon in Apocalypse Now, and nodded assent, asking how much they cost, then suddenly remembering to ask if he would get a phone directory with his phone. Schillerz looked over at Siobhan, who responded with a blank, search-me expression, which prompted Schillerz to admit that they had not given that matter the consideration it deserved.
At This point Tom closed the pages of his magazine, signifying his desire to become a fully-fledged particpant in this conversation. He scratched his beard, the way he always did when planning one of his neat, foolproof solutions to the vissisitudes life threw at him.
“Hmm. I guess they’ll probably bring one down alright. If they don’t, there’s some adresses in Dublin I’d like you to check out, and give them my number.”
An admirable solution, if not expressed in a grammatically correct way, but then Tom was a great admirer of a certain walrus-moustached nineteenth-century German philosopher whose name is quite hard to spell.
“Incidentally, when will you be making your little trip?”, he asked, downgrading it’s importance in a defence-mechanistic way.
“Well, they said the phone would be here in three weeks, so we booked the tickets for a month from now.” Siobhan and Tom smiled at one another, she admiring his chameleon-like ability to blend in, he thinking that his daughter’s gain might be a significant loss to the abwehr after all. The smiles made them more at ease with one another, and they chatted about Dublin, about England, about childrearing till the cows had not only come home but put the dinner on and gone in to watch Coronation Street, one of those long, semi-intimate conversations that well-adjusted sit-com families have, though our heroes were anything but your typical focus-group nuclear family. Nonetheless, it was one in which the bonds between Schillerz and Siobhan strenghtened, but in which the imminent departure of the young couple hung over them like a sword of Damocles, or a tin-opener leaning over the edge of a kitchen table where someone was preparing dinner dressed only in their socks.
The athmosphere of Carpe Diem pervaded the house like the odours from an incense stick for the following month, undiluted by the wistful nihilism of Becket’s latest ouevre, which was passed along the triumverate like a baton at the olympic games, ‘sceptin dat dere was only three of ‘em, massa. There were the obvious heart-to-hearts, tete-a-tetes, moments of Proustian intimacy and Joycean epiphany. I won’t bore you or give myself repetitive stress disorder by describing them all, just present a few edited highlights that our experts will take us through after the break.

One day, about two days after they got back from Dublin, they’d just had some home-made cous-cous with chick peas, seasoned with cumin and cayenne pepper. Home-made cous-cous? Oh, did I not mention that Siobhan could add cous-cous making to her CV, if she thought it would help her get a part-time job in a WWII London factory? Yes, using as recipe that Tom brought back from Beiruit or Abu-Dhabi from watching chaste beveiled arab maidens rolling wheat in the blazing sun in the dusty bazaars, almost completing the preparation with their steaming sweat. He had watched them, trying to remain impassive while they gave him suspicious glances, surveying their every action carefully as he knew, even with his passable Arabic that he could never, ever approach these women and ask them what they were doing. Yet when he returned, six months later, he was able to turn raw wheat grain into cous-cous that would satisfy the most demanding customer in the trendiest Islington eaterie today, and pass on the knowledge to his daughter, who every month went to a local organic farmer, who was organic because he hadn’t even heard of fertilisers, and turned his pure, unadulterated wheat by some sublime alchemy into the food of Morrocan peasants and London yuppies. Would Tom have made a good spy, himself, therefore? Of course, dammit, Tom would have been a success at anything he turned his hand to. That’s the whole point of Tom. DO try to keep up. Anyway, the point of this story is that cayenne pepper was, then as now, best known as a spice but can also be used to palliate low blood pressure in a similar way to some recreational drugs that are manufactured in the lower Cork harbour area you can have prescribed if you convince your GP that the snake down your trousers hasn’t been able to stand to attention with the same regularity that he used to. It won’t have escaped your attention, being the cultivated, well-informed, erudite, au courant, would-get-to-£32,000-on- Who wants to be a millionaire-without-wasting-any-of-your-lifelines type that you obviously are that Latin America, from where said spice originates, is full of teeming, copiously populated cities. You have to wonder where they all come from, know what I mean, eh, eh, huh, know what I mean?

Indeed. So Schillerz has eaten from this tree of knowledge, as it were, and the aphrodisiac properties have kicked in, so to speak. As I used up all the relevant synonyms already, suffice it to say he had an erection, the type that won’t go away no how often you think of aging catholic nuns. But, whaddya know, Mr. Nabakov, he doesn’t know if Siobhan is in a position to offer him relief. Ah, Sure God love us, doesn’t he go in go in to her room and try to find out if she can or not. So he knocks on the door, she invites him, he goes in and she’s reading a book, be honest with ya I can’t remember what it was. So he lies down next to her and he says something like this:
“Siobhan, I’m a little embarrassed to ask you this but...”
She can’t help but notice the pretuberence in his trousers, and put’s her hand down there, grabs hold of it, and asks, “is it something to do with this?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Woman’s intuition. So what is it you wanted to know? Surely not...”
“Well, I remember what you said about your cycle and...”
“My cycle?” she asked, followed by a burst of laughter. “Hermes, I hate to have to tell you this, but my cycle is going to be interrupted for another eight months or so.”
“And....”
“And, for the next six months”, she replied, unbuttoning her blouse, “you can fuck me till the cows come home. After that you won’t want to, as I’ll be all bloated and suffering from morning sickness and stuff.”
That was about as much of a cue as he required. Charming little anecdote, n’est ce pas? The sort of thing that would never happen to a spock child or anyone who’s lived in the post-Hite age of sexual freedom, except in a non-western country. The sort of story you can indulge in writing when you’re composing an historical novel, with gentle condescencion for your innocent ancestors. Yet the old apothegm eats away at the back of my mind like Homer Simpson in an all-you-can-eat restraurant:

Every Time You Gain Something you Lose Something.

I’m not sure if that’s entirely true, actually. From this particular experience, Schillerz gained the knowledge that he’d be able to screw Siobhan for the next six months and lost... What, exactly?

So, that was on of the raisins like that that made up the current cake of their life in that month, along with the currents of the odd really fine meal and the marzipan of the odd excellent book enjoyed, and the sultana of the odd trip to a movie and dance in town. After he had gotten through Murphy and been dazzled by it’s imagination and humour (I think Beckett’s prose kicks ass, Martin) he read a verse translation of The Divine Comedy, Madame Bovary, The Republic, On Liberty, Walden and Civil Disobedience, the sort of books that make a craterous impression on the febrile mind of a twenty-one-year old.

Then, one day, a couple of weeks after they got back from Dublin and the wait for the phone to be installed was turning into one of Beckett’s later drama’s, Schillerz was sitting up in bed, reading an original German version of Death in Venice that Tom had picked up in Vienna about fifteen years ago, on his way back form the Middle East. Peculiarly, Siobhan noticed, his expression seemed to become more teutonic when he read the German prose of the tortured Jewish Homosexual whose books he would have been burning a month or so ago. His spectacles seemed to drift a little bit down his nose, his brow become that little bit more furrowed. This was actually the first time he’d read German, other than his manual, since he got here. Tom had totally forgotten he’d had that book, and Schillerz had just come across it on one of his perusals of Tom’s dusty shelves, and when Schillerz showed it to him he welcomed it like a long-lost friend. As a rule they didn’t ever speak German to each other, as it alienated Siobhan, and Schillerz needed to practice his English. Anyway, it wasn’t like Tom was ever going to go to Germany again, was it? It was a strange experience for Schillerz, reading Mann’s flowing, undulating prose in his own tongue, renewing his acquaintaince with large compound words that you only saw in books the way you meet old schoolfriends in a bar.
He was basking in one passage of anguished, petrarchan lust when Siobhan, who would liked to have let him finish, but had something pressing on her mind.
“Hermes?”
He looked up with look of moderate annoyance, a look that suggested he was irked but would get over it.
“Do you remember when me da suggested that you get a job working for the British secret service, and he said something like `isn’t that what you wanted to do anyway?’ What was that all about?”
Are you familiar with the scene where Iago asks Othello, “When you were courting Desdemona, did Micheal Cassio know of your love?” That’s the effect I’m going for here, except that rather than a Machiavellian Italian and a sligthly slow moor, we have an honest-as-the-day-is-long Irish girl and a conflicted German ex-spy. Nonetheless, his reaction is so similar to that of the moor’s that he could play understudy to Olivier (or Larry Fishbourne, except he’d need more realistic makeup), if only for that one brief moment. He looks up from his book briefly, not thinking the matter of any importance, says:
“I was just thinking aloud with your father one day, thought it might be a good idea for me to rejoin the war.”
His eyes drifted back down to the compelling text, thinking, perhaps a little naively, that the matter was now closed. He didn’t see the surprise and disdain on Siobhan’s face ‘til she grabbed the book away from him, slammed it face down on the bed and said, somewhat stunned at his apathy:
“And why didn’t you discuss this with me?”
“Well, I...” he started to formulate a response, but the glare that had taken over Siobhan’s face with the alacrity of a blitzkreig mad him nervous, “I discuss most of the books I read with your father. It was one of them that made me think that... maybe I was... wasting my time here... but... I don’t know, really.. genuinely, it might have passed, if we hadn’t found out about...” he put his hand on her stomach, gave her an apologetic, puppy-dog look, which succeeded, if not in cozening her, at least in taking the vitriolic edge off her rage.
“So, what if you had decided to go to London before you knew I was pregnant? Would you have taken me?” “If that was what you wanted, yes. And your father, I suppose”, he added, apprehensively.
“So you were planning to take me to London, and didn’t even tell me aboout it?”
He took a deep breath, remembering some of the stuff Tom had told him about Zen. “I wasn’t planning anything. I was just... speculating. If I made any serious plans, you would be the first to know about them.”
“So why didn’t you discuss you `speculations’ with me?”
· He looked over at the wall, perhaps imagining it a more receptive interlocutor. “Your father is the person I discuss books with. And, before you ask, it’s not because I don’t think you’re intelligent, it’s just that he’s read more.” He paused, and added: “I know you’re sick of being in his shadow. When we go to London you can finally come out from under it, get a job, make new friends among the Irish community there, bring up our child the way you want... That’s what you want, right?” He looked at her nervously, but the look of complaisance on her face suggest he had successfully walked the tightrope over the crocodile pit of female wrath to the safety of feminine beneficence. It’s a tightrope all of those burdened with external genitalia have to walk sometime, or else be condemned to the fate of Onan. Unless we live in an Islamic country or... Well, I’ll get to that in a whil
The final episode in our tryptich of vignettes from Schillerz and Siobhan’s last month in Ireland before the war ends takes place in Tom’s living room. Siobhan is upstairs, having had a particularly hard day’s chores making sure everything is ready for their departure, which is in a few days time, though that fucking phone hasn’t been installed yet. Tom and Schillerz are in the Living room reading, the younger man a novel by Walter Greenwood, to prepare for the harsh realities of life in Wartime England, his cenobite a work by Schopenhaur which he read before when he was a little older than Schillerz is now, but, ignoring Heraclitus’ advice, is taking another dip in. On the turntable is some Klavier music by Bach adopted for piano, one of the fugues from The Well Tempered Klavier, played by Arrau, it sounds like. While Schillerz is engrossed in a world of Anglo-Saxon proletarian woe, Tom is uncharacteristically unfocused on his book, or maybe it’s that something he’s read has set him off on one of those Eumeus-chapter-of-Ulysses, net-surfing tangents that he is rather prone to. It causes him to look up from his book, listen to the dolorific harmonies with increased attention. Schillerz does not see him look up, but, through a sixth or seventh or eight sense, he becomes aware of it. He looks up, Tom sees him, his face remains motionless, as if he was a character in one of the late Beckett plays that their life has become.
“I had some more attacks of those pains today, when you and Siobhan took Plato for a walk.”
“Oh... I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Not your fault. It’s a bit of a truism, but all great thinkers suffer pains like these. It’s just...”
Schillerz didn’t ask him to continue, just looked at him patiently, inquisitively.
“It’s just, the more I think of it, the more I realise how it’s not just the artists...” he gave a nod in the direction of the turntable, “who have to suffer to produce great art.”
He looked over at Schillerz, saw that he had his complete attention.
“I think your compatriot, Walter Benjamin may have a point when he says there’s no monument to civilisation that isn’t a monument to barbarism as well. When I think what the future will be like, with the victors in the war, I mean the US more than Britain or France, enjoying prosperity unknown since the days of the Roman empire, people will be free to make art like they never have before, so many new types of music, film and literature will emerge, what the Spenglers of the future might call an Age D’or or a Gouden Eouw. Yet... Yet ‘twill all stem from their subjugation of other peoples in Africa and Asia, just as this music is only made possible by Polish peasants toiling in the fields of East Prussia... Jesus, What a fucking burden it is to be human being sometimes.”
With these words he retreated into a sort of solipsistic cocoon where he made little eye contact, realising he couldn’t convey the pain he was feeling with enough clarity.
Schillerz realised the truth of what he was saying, but wondered why it had become so pertinent to him at this particular time. Was his brain throwing up a smokescreen to protect him from the pain of losing his daughter? If so, it was a startlingly ineffective one.

The phone came a day or two later, in the nick of time, it seemed, as they were due to leave in a couple of days time. It was a major job, as the house was so far off the beaten track, and might not be finished before they left, but at least they would have a number to give to Tom’s Dublin friends. A green van emblazoned with the Psuedo-Celtic P&T symbol arrived at the house, followed by a truck which had seen better days carrying the additional poles that would be needed to connect Tom to the nationwide network. It drew attention to itself when it drove through town, and would surely have been followed by the little kids who stared at it if didn’t necessitate such a long walk. A couple of middle-aged working class Dubliners stepped out, and were greeted by Siobhan and Schillerz, who had been alerted by all the noise they made, and asked if this was the house of Mr. Thomas Cornelius O’Grady. It was hard to know whether this question or it’s affirmative response generated more relief, as Schillerz clutched Siobhan tightly and she looked up at him with a glance that seemed to presage a hopeful future. The two Dubliners set to work straight away, trying to figure out what would be the most economic way to set up a connection with the main phone line in town. They opened up an OS map, pressed it down against the bonnet of the car to prevent it blowing in the gentle summer breeze. They beckoned the couple, whose obvious affection for one another neither fazed them of affected the temperature of their cardiological cockles in any way. They wanted to establish which fields were on Tom’s property and which were public property. She stood between them and surveyed the map in a way that reminded Schillerz of Dietrich in The Scarlet Empress, and there was hardly a higher compliment he could pay. Then he thought, realising how long it would take, that he should offer some assistance. This offer was greeted with a mixture of pleasant surprise and suspicion.
“Now why would you want to do dat now?”, one of them asked in the sort of thick Dublin accent that left Schillerz to ponder on how he had ever passed himself off as a middle-class Dubliner. His response was measured, avoiding terms like `honest toil’, `salt of the earth’ or anything else that suggested he just wanted to slum it for a few days. “Well, now, we wouldn’t be able to pay youse none”, came a reply from the alpha-prole, to which he responded with an apathetic shrug and said he just wanted to speed up the job, as they would be leaving in a few days.
“Oh, off to help defeat that fucker Hitler, are we? Pardon my French, mam.”
“Yes, I suppose we are, in a sense.”
“Well, I suppose we’ll need all the help we can get putting in those poles.” At those words his partner whispered something in his ear.
“The Union? Sure how are they going to find out? Sure we needn’t be worrin’ ‘bout them.”
Schillerz, whose compatriots were members of huge, disciplined unions bfore being coralled into Gentleman Ley’s DeutschesArbeitFront could not possibly have comprehended the arcane, tangled web of demarcation disputes that would have confronted the Dubliners if their union bosses did find out.
So Schillerz was handed a Pick and asked if he knew what to do with it. He had never used one before, but knew it couldn’t be all that complicated. For the next day and a half, Siobhan, who had made all the preparations for travelling and was at a bit of a loose end, took her turn to watch him toil. It wasn’t out of Schadenfreude, a word that she would understand neither linguistically nor conceptually. No, she took pleasure of the purest, most visceral type in watching his lean, muscular, bare torso strecthing in the mellow sunlight, glistening with the sweat that only intense manual labour can draw. Every few hours she would bring them a cup of tea. That’s a bit of a relief for the neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychologists out there, I’ll be bound. By the evening of the second day, they were ready to install the phone, and called Tom out to view their work. He came out to see Schillerz, still without his shirt, with his arm around his daughter, his pectoral muscles tightening as he spoke, his abdominals starting to peer out from behind his stomach fat, like some noble son of the soil in a Soviet Propaganda painting of the same period, with the fruits of his labour displayed prominently in the background. While the Dubs looked on, he looked at them with a combination of admiration and maybe a scintilla of envy, a knowledge that while we were all young and beautiful once, he might never have been quite as beautiful as this, and certainly never would be again.
The phone was installed, a big, awkward one with a dumbell-like handle and little holes to stick your finger in that would eventually accommodate bits of food and dust and other types of detritus that one would neither be able nor wish to identify. The Workmen looked on, with the sort of satisfaction in a days work well done that mechanisation had robbed so many of but, like the double-edged sword, fit wind that it was, had granted them. They stared at it, placed like a multiarticulate Hindu Deity, either given pride of place or positioned to channel the positive energies, man. However, the lads from the P&T weren’t that au fait with the whole feng shui thing, and merely stood there, slightly awkwardly, waiting for him to make clairvoyant contact by the mechanical means they had provided, so they could ride into the sunset and return to that lil’ homestead they called Dublin. After a minute or so, this became a little embarressing, so one of them, the Jay to his partner’s Silent Bob, asked, “Isn’t there anyone you want to call right now?”
“Well, there is, but I don’t have any numbers right now. I was hoping you’d supply a directory with the telephone.” “Oh Jaysus, we almost forgot.” He ran out to the van, apologising on the way out, and returned, as quick as nouveaux riches businessmen forget their old friends, with a lumbering mass of paper, what the Domesday book might have looked like if Gutenberg had preceded it’s publication. He took it in his hands like Charlemange accepting communion in Rome, then surveyed the names of those he could now contact with an Olympian, or Ozymandian if you will, detachment, then thought of how each of these smudgy pieces of ink represented a life, a set of desires and dreams and pains and joys and sexual fantasies and guilt and memories and dental problems and needs and friends and vindictiveness and other stuff that he could drive himself crazy if he thougth about them too long. So, while the workmen twiddled their thumbs and looked at their watches, he looked up the name of a friend of his, a sub-editor with The Irish Times. He put his hands tentatively into the first of the holes he would have to swing round, the zero that suggested he was connecting himself to some sort of sacred ground zero the way an electrical appliance is earthed to the centre of this planet that keeps us all from floating round aimlessly in the cosmos, the way a Borgia would have placed his hand into the lion of truth. He got the number right first time, and when the phone on the other side of the line rang, his reply had the exultanacy of a Saint Catherine or a Teresa of Avila. The workman left, returning a grateful valediction, after the start of the conversation, which to a fly on the wall of Tom’s house, would have sounded a little like this: “Hi, Sean, ‘tis me, Tom O’ Grady.”
“Just this minute. The lads who installed it are just out the door.” “Ah, sure who else would I choose to phone first?”
“Ah, not too bad, not too bad. Still getting those pains now and again. And my daughter is going to be leaving the roost tomorrow morning.”
“Well, ‘tis a long story, I s’pose I can tell you in more detail next time you come down. Actually, that’s sort of the reason I got the phone installed. You see, with my daughter gone away...”
“Well, no, I really wouldn’t need someone here permanently, just someone to come down once or twice a week to check I’m Okay.”
“Really? You think you’d be able to swing that?”
“Of, course, I’d be enormously grateful.” “Ah, get way outta that. You have so much talent that you’d always have been a success, even without my help.”
“Of course, I’d be delighted to do it.” “Ah, no, no, I wouldn’t be looking for any money. I’m not short of a few bob myself, and I know how hard times are right now. How are things up in Dooblin right now, by the way?”
At this point our hypothetical volant invertebrate would stop secreting whatever fluids he had to to stay on Tom’s wall and fly off to see if Plato had excreted anything to tempt his palette, as he would have heard most of the rest of the converstaion before, even if he did have a lifespan of only twenty-four hours. He was still on the phone to his friend when our two young friends came downstairs from the bathroom, where she had gently sponged his aching limbs, the sort of task that’s a pleasure to those in love, and a chore for those in a lasting marraige. He looked sparklingly clean, as if she’d taken him back to the manufcturers and exchanged him for a new model. When the corner of Tom’s eye caught sight of them coming down the stairs, he decided it was an optimum moment to wind up the conversation.
“Listen, I’ll have to let you go.” He gave his number and told his interlocuter that he couldn’t tell him how grateful he was, which may have been a relief. He put the reciever down in the reverent way a nurse hands a doctor a scalpel, and beckoned our heroes over enthusiastically.
“Oh my Lord, kids, you’ll never believe my good fortune.”
They looked at him and wondered what piece of serendipity could possibly compensate for their imminent departure.
“The Irish Times are looking for someone to write a twice-weekly column on the current international situation that will inform people of what’s going on out there without falling foul of the censor’s dreaded blue pencil.”
They looked at him, he with a look of genuine confusion, she with immanent, almost tumescent optimism.
“And they want me to be that person.” He closed his eyes, anticipating the hermetic embrace in which Siobhan would immediately smother him. When she did, he held out his right arm from under her shoulder to receive Schillerz’ manly handshake. When the initial ecstasy which he had inspired in his daughter had subsided, she was moved to ask: “But how will you get up to Dublin every week?”
“I won’t have to. They’ll send down a secretary with a typewriter twice a week”, adding, as his cheeks turned a pale shade of crimson, “As if I was a delphic oracle”, then turning serious again, concluded, “This way my pains won’t keep me out of commission for more than a few days, and I often got by for longer without food on my travels.”
Siobhan embraced him again, and just to show he wasn’t being neglected, gave Schillerz a bit of a hug as well, and then went in to prepare what was to have been a valedictory meal but had been transformed by this alchemic deus ex machina into a celebratory dinner, though they might have had a little difficulty cooking the seven courses that Roman generals or East Asian businessmen would have feasted upon. However, with a improvisatory spirit that surfed the wartime zeitgeist with the grace and dexterity of SoCals finest they prepared a meal that the King might not have considered fit but would have left the chancellor satisfied and the keeper of the privy seal in a frenzy of gastronomic bliss.
It certainly kept these commoners happy, and Tom was certainly not one of those self-made men who tried to trace his ancestry back to the Milesians, confident that his own accomplishments were enough to prove a nobility of character rather than of lineage. For Schillerz, too, though many of his beliefs had been cast to the winds, and doubtless carried like seeds in Shelleys West Wind ode to germinate elsewhere, as though obeying some physical law of thermodynamics that kept the fanaticism of the human race at a constant level, the idea of the dignified, loyal working man had stayed with him like an ex-girlfriend who he could never quite let go of.
So, like prolitarian parvenues at the king’s table, they feasted on the grapefruit sprinkled with the sugar ration they had decided to splurge, drank the cheap wine they had bought at the off-licence the week before as if it was the finest champagne, and savoured the biryani with little thought that in a day or two they would probably have to get by on cod and chips from a copy of the previous day’s Daily Mirror. And why should they, when Siobhan could take an apple tart out of the oven at the perfect moment when the crust is crumbling but hasn’t turned hard yet, and pour the freshest, thickest cream that she would come across for a long time on it and carve it up the way the great powers would have done to Africa in 1875.
After they had savoured the last of Siobhan’s cooking, they talked for an hour and a half. It’s truer to say that they asked questions and he answered. Interesting, actually, that “he”, as you probably know, is Tom, while “they” are his daughter and her boyfriend. Right now, though, it didn’t seem to bother him that his daughter’s greatest affection was for another, for just as the apple tart came out of the oven at the perfect time, everything else, just for this moment seemed to have clicked into place.
So he answered their questions, always after a slight roll of his eyes, as if just behing them a cerebral google search was going on in the mercurial web of Tom’s mind, questions about London, about the people and how they should deal with them, always answered without either the reflexive contempt of the nationalist or the fawning admiration of the West Brit. Schillerz never ceased to be amazed at his knowledge of postcodes and tube stations, from someone who hadn’t been to the Anglo-Saxon metropolis in fifteen years. Then they went into the living room, put on a bit of Duke Elington, which seemed to exorcise some important information from the back of Tom’s cavernous mind.
“Oh Lord, I nearly forgot, I had a few friends who went over to live in Kilburn a few years ago. They might still be there, if you ask around in some bars in the area, you should be able to find them.”
“Where is Kilburn?” asked Schillerz. Tom was surprised that he hadn’t mentioned it in any of his spiels, though, thankfully, though he was given to extemporaneous modes of discourse, didn’t say anything like “Kilburn’s not a place, it’s a state of mind, man.”
“It’s a bit like Northern Ireland in reverse, though the Irish community would never demand that the metropolitan police change their name to Gardai and take an oath of allegiance in Irish or go round in big gangs beating up natives. Actually, the people there are a bit like the original Anglo-Norman settlers here - more Irish than the Irish. Actually, ‘twould be lovely to get a place there, if you could.”
Ominous, portentous words from a man who could predict which way the war was going to go but didn’t know exactly which areas the luftwaffe were going to have in their sights. Schillerz and Siobhan merely nodded, unaware of any of the twists and turns that the war would take before the wounded, tattered dove came home to have it’s wings healed. But then war only brings into a sharp relief the thin line we walk between sentience and whatever it’s opposite may be.
When they had ostensibly exhuasted Tom’s knowledge of the subject, they decided it was time to go to bed, as they had to be up early in the morning, though, almost superfluous to say, none of them would let each other go without a litany of melancholy, lachrymose valedictions. They ended, finally, at a late hour, with a silent, last final look at each others faces and a final embrace that had the solemnity of an irrevocable sacrament. Then they made the final, inevitably anticlimatic journey back up to the bedroom, where the state of consciousness that Hamlet and Henry IV sought in vain came with the felicity of an erection on a fourteen-year-old boy in a room full of naked women.

Perchance to dream? An hour after Morpheus took them into his languid embrace, Schillerz was in a London composed of images from Pabst’s Threepenny Opera, Tom’s tales of the city, and his own imaginings. He was walking through the dark, puddled streets after time had been called at a tavern, past the pock-marked beggars and the garishly dressed prostitutes, one of whom called out “Evenin’, ‘andsome, fancy a bit of vis?”, and grabbed her crotch, sending a shudder through his veins at the thought of the diseases she might be carrying in hers, and the fat, balding, businessmen she might have passed them on to, and the stupifying narcotics she would spend their tainted half-crowns on. His pace stepped up to a trot, or as close to a trot as someone’s pace could be without seeming incongruous in this stygian pit of a place. He was eager to get home to his warm homestead where a less repellent girl would be waiting for him, so he rushed after the next bus he saw, the No. 42. He sat down among the cigarette butts and bits of old newspaper, waited for the conductor to come along, but it never happened. So he looked at the faces of those around him, listless and sullen, silent but for the odd squelching sound of a nose being blown, and the passing buildings, which all merged into one another, Big Ben sprouting like an unwanted erection from the stately trellisses of St. Pauls, the gothic spires of Westminister Abbey mellowing into the modernist arabesque curves of Westminister Cathedral . He got off the bus, still without having paid any money, and looked for his house, which was also no. 42. He got there, having to step over some beggars and around some dog-shit, and started to knock on the door, but he got no reply. He knocks harder, causing his knuckles to redden to the hue of cox’s pippens and echoes to resound around the dark, wet streets, yet still there’s no reply. He bangs the door with his head, shouts out Siobhan’s name forlornly like Brando in A Streetcar named Desire. Then he knocks some more, the sounds echoing, resounding, resonating, a clangerous, multisonous, plangent, stetorian noise that no-one could ignore, the knock the grim reaper would produce before dragging his victims to that fatal shore from which no traveller ever returns.

He wakes in the kind of cold sweat most of us only experience when we die of flu, and hears a loud knocking on the door downstairs. He looks at Siobhan, who is still asleep. He gets out of bed, taking care not to wake her, and tiptoes into Tom’s room. He’s sitting up in bed in a Buddha-like stance, but there’s no nirvana on his face, but a look of panic, panic that causes him to bite his nails while scrathing his beard. Schillerz, who now starts to feel his fear, asks him what the continuing knocking is about.
“I don’t know”, he replies, not moving except to take his hand slightly away from his mouth, “But I fear the worst.”
Schillerz, genuinely puzzled, asks what this could be.
“Remember when I told you about those laundries they put unmarried pregnant women in?”, he asks, still motionless.
The blood seems to drain from Schillerz face and leaves him a ghoulish wraith, a shadow of a man like a long-term POW. He touches his forehead as if anticipating the pain and providing it with an outlet. He bends down towards the ground, as if the shock had destabalised his vertabrae, or as if looking down into the dark, Boschian pit to which his loved one has been condemned, displaying, in a bitter, salient, irony, a love that could transcend any scrap of paper that binds them together.
When he recovered enough equilibrium to formulate a coherent sentence, he looked up, like a disciple of a boddhavista seeking enlightenment, and asked, “What can we do?”
Tom responded by remaining in the same position, gave a desperate, despairing look, and uttered, in a tremulous, quivering voice, three words that Schillerz had never heard him utter in all the time they had been together.
“I don’t know.”
Schillerz was palpably shocked, and Tom recognised this, though his slight falling-off in Schillerz’ estimation was not the most pressing thing on his mind. Schillerz could only gasp and ask, “You don’t know?”
This was the butterfly-wing flapping that pushed Tom from the cliffs of despair into the valley of wrath.
“No, I don’t know. I haven’t a clue. I’m ignorant. I don’t have a fucking clue
what to do. Are you fucking happy now?” This outburst seemed to turn him from a passive Gandhi into a histrionic, gesticulative, vitriolic... Schillerz drew back from any comparisons he may later regret. At the same time he heard the rustling of blankets that suggested that Siobhan had woken up. There was an awkward moment when they waited for her to come into the room and an even more awkward one when she entered, scrathing the dust from her eyes and asking what all the noise was about. The two males look at each other, each only too willing to relinquish alpha status right now, willing to discard the responsibility of telling her like a particularly virulent bout of gonnorhea. After a few seconds of this masochism, Schillerz, still feeling as if his speech organs had come off worse in a feline altercation, walked over and caressed her stomach, inducing a horrified, apoplectifying anagnorisis that left her with a terror that could only be released in a gradual crescendo of negation.
“Oh, No”, polite and measured like a parent whose son has got a bad school result.
“No, No”, pressing her hand against her forehead, running it through her hair, like a wife who finds out her husband is an alcoholic.
“Jesus, No”, pressing both hands against her temples, like a middle aged woman who has been diagnosed with Cancer.
“Fuck, No”, shrill and piercing, like a woman who faces the prospect of being imprisoned in a laundry run by psychotic brides of Christ for the rest of her fucking life. She falls back to the wall, as if all the energy had been sucked from her legs, which are spread open in an ungainly sprawl that seems to express her forlorn grief better than any words could. She shakes her head like a boxer trying to strengthen his neck muscles, each angry toss seeming to elicit another “No”. Eventually she is moved to ask her father the same question that Tom asked of him. Now he is in a more advanced state of reaction to the horror, and says, simply and calmly: “I don’t think there’s much we can do. You could try to escape, but they probably have the place surrounded.”
“I escaped from the police before”, Schillerz offered.
“That was just the police. This time they probably have some nuns and priests with them, the people who get subsidised for every woman and child they imprison. They won’t let you go so easily.” The idea of running hand in hand through the fields with his pregnant girlfriend chased by nuns holding their habits on with one hand seemed a bit surreal, but not that much more surreal than the situation they were already in. In any case, neither Siobhan nor he were in any condition to run anywhere.
As the knocking continued, Tom suggested that Schillerz go to the front window and look to see who was there. Tom’s worst fears were proved correct as Schillerz peeked from behind the venetian blind to see a paddy wagon, three gardai, two nuns, a priest and a doctor. One of the police was banging ferociously at the door, so much so that for a second Schillerz thought he saw his mouth froth slightly. The other two tapped their truncheons against their thighs and looked as if they were making ominous suggestions to one another. He returned tentatively to Tom’s room, was adressed, in an improbable moment of levity by his olympian moniker and asked what information he had brought back from his flight-footed journey to the breach.
He paused, searching for the right words, though he was surely aware that no amount of verbal massaging could rectify this situation.
“It doesn’t look good. There’s six of them, altogether, and it looks like they might try to break down the door any minute.”
Siobhan, who was holding onto her father the way bladder wrack does to the rocks when the tide is in, pressed her lachrymose face against his slender shoulder. He had no other advice but to accept the force majeure with which they were confronted, though nothing in this world or any subsequent one could cause him more pain. He delegated Schillerz the responsibilty of going downstairs to let the representatives of Church and State in. Reluctantly, he went down, opened the door, and feigned innocence.
“Good Morning officers. How may I be off assistance?”
“Don’t give me any of that”, said the corpulent, sorrel-faced officer as he pushed his way past. “Where is the little tramp?”
Even to someone brought up in Nazi Germany, this was a bit shocking. He could only recoil in horror as they went up the stairs and came back down with the flailing body of Siobhan, emitting high pitched screams that the guardians of the peace only drew away from, realising that they had induced a wrath that was impossible to repress. They dragged her by the heels, past the incredulous face of Schillerz, out to face the reproachful, sanctimonious faces of the nuns, and held her up by the shoulders as the doctor held a stethescope to her uterus and determined that she was indeed carrying a bastard in her womb. They then bundled her into the van like a mailbag and got ready to drive away. Schillerz who was getting over his shock, ran out and shouted, “Take me, too. I’m the one who got her pregnant”, but got no response. “And I’m a Nazi spy!”
Still no answer. He raised his hand aloft, shouted “Heil Hitler!”
No response. He started to sing Deutscheland UberAlles, but even after he surmised the guard’s heads were towards eternity, he continued, standing there on a chilly night in his silk pyjamas outside a country house in Ireland singing the German national anthem. Any other time, Tom, who was making his way down the stairs, would have found this a cause for amusement, but this time the irony was far too bitter. He just put his arm around Schillerz’ shoulder, but, though the singing stopped, it was replaced by an even more fearsome prospect.” “Hit me.”
Tom was a bit taken aback. “Hermes, you know I’m a believer in the Hindu notion of Ahimsa.” I can’t cause pain to any person.”
But... you won’t be causing me any pain. I can’t feel any more pain than I do already. You’ll be relieving me of pain. Hit me, please.” He held out his jaw, but Tom could only say, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to find your own way of dealing with this”, at which Schillerz burst into tears and threw his arms around Tom. After a while they went inside, made some herbal tea, and talked for hours, Schillerz becoming more and more shocked at each additional detail of the life that awaited the one that they loved. But there was another leitmotif in their conversation that they kept coming back to like a heroin addict to his dealer.
How did they find out so soon? It wasn’t like there was any sort of visible bulge that would have given her away like a Scarlet `A’.
“Are you sure you didn’t mention on on the train”, Tom asked repeatedly. Every time Schillerz racked his weary brains, went over every detail of that journey and every trip they had made into town, but could only recall the fearful paranoia that had led to the most diligent discretion. Eventually Tom accepted that there might always be this one epistemelogical hole in his life, though he had far from given up the hope that enlightenment may strike Schillerz at any second.
Then it was Schillerz’ turn to ask Tom what his plans were.
“I’ll get on to some friends up in Dublin, see what I can do.”
His ostensible equanimity made Schillerz wonder if the Tao had made such a big impact on him or if he was just in the denial stage. He gave Tom the final embrace of the evening and staggered up to bed. After the initial, inevititable, tossing and turning, he actually got a few hours sleep, enough to leave him relatively coherent when he woke the next morning to the distant echoing of Tom’s prognosticated phone conversations, which were in that grey limbo between audibility and distinctness. He decided he would go down and find out what strings Tom had been able to pull and if the marionettes at the other end had danced to his tune. He went downstairs, immediately feeling Siobhan’s absence permeate the house like a choking, stifling miasma. As he made his way down, he started to pick up snatches of Tom’s conversation.
“So you’re really sure there’s nothing you can do? “I know they have enormous power but...”
“Damn right I’ve done a lot for you.” “Sure, I’ll keep you posted.”
When Schillerz entered the room he had put the phone down and was crouched in the armchair with his head in his hands. When he heard Schillerz’ footsteps he looked up.
“Well, Hermes, I guess it’s times like this a man really learns who his friends are”, he uttered in a voice stoical and querelous at once.
Schillerz, to whom the import of his words was immediately obvious, was at a loss to find any words of comfort.
“I suppose perhaps it was a bit naive to expect any of my friends to be able to help”, Tom continued. “I know they all would if they could, but the forces they are up against are extremely powerful.”
Seeing the despair in his black-ringed eyes and hearing the grief in his voice, Schillerz wondered whether he should make his own suggestion as to how she should be freed, but was held back for the moment by a fear that it might be treated as a sick, tasteless, joke. Instead he asked if Tom had had breakfast, was told that he’d been up at the crack of dawn and that the receiver had almost become an extension of himself, which prompted Schillerz to offer him some. He accepted, but the contrast between last night’s feast and this functional repast could hardly have been sharper, either in it’s preparation, which was peremptory and cursory, not granted even the attention a student gives to a part-time summer job, or it’s consumption, which was languid, apathethic, and unfinished, at least in Tom’s case. For Schillerz, it seemed impolite to indulge in complete satiation of his appetite when Tom sat across from him, silently, listlessly, struggling to chew the bread rolls that Schillerz had hastily prepared.
When he had put the rump of his roll down on the plate and left it to ossify into inedibility, he summoned the moral energy required to ask: “So what do you want to do now?”
“Well, there was one thing I had in mind, but...” “But what?” “But I was unsure if you would think it tasteless or inapropriate.”
“Try me.”
Schillerz hesitated, caressing the space in front of him as if he might pluck the appropriate words from the air.
“Well, neither of us wants to see Siobhan rot in that Magdelen hell-hole, right?” If this story was taking place fifty or sixty years later, Tom would have said “D’uh!” but right now was limited to an unassuming, affirmative shrug of his shoulders.
“And your attempts to free her through conventional channels have, so far, been in vain, right?”
Tom nodded.
“Well, I’m trained as a spy and in survival techniques and espionage and...”
Tom, realising where this was going, interjected: “If you want to try and free her by breaking in there’s a few things I should warn you. If you get caught, you’ll probably go to jail. If I’m still alive when the war is over, I’ll petition the German legation here to get you released, though I dare say they’ll have much else on their minds. Either way, you’ll have lost some of the best years of your life.”
“The best years of my life!”, he riposted, bitterly, and displaying an unfamiliar flair for melodrama, went on “How could they be the best years of my life if the woman I love is rotting in a borstal while my child grows up getting fucked up the ass by paedophile priests?”
Strong words, but with a logic that Tom nonetheless found compelling.
“So what’s your plan?”
He hesitated again, said, “I may have seen more prison escape movies than were good for me, but here goes.” Then he hesitated and qualified: “I’ll need some help, though, and maybe a car.” Tom gave a shrug that suggested he could summon all the help Schillerz needed with a casual click of his fingers.
“Okay, well, here’s the plan. Right. So... We find out which home she’s in and...”
“I know which one it’s likely to be.”
“Okay, so... I dress up like a woman, some friends of yours dress up like nuns or priests, have me committed to the same home. I hide some form of weapon in my clothes, find Siobhan and free her while the car waits outside. Then we drive to the ferry and get out of this godforsaken country.”
Tom considered this plan with a mixture of paternal pride and caution.
“That’s really imaginative, but there’s one or two things you have to bear in mind. One of the first things they’ll do when you get in there is strip all your clothes off, so...”
“Why would they do that?” “Don’t ask. Just bear in mind it gives you little time to manouver. So you have to be really quick, otherwise...” he made the symbol of a wrought iron gate falling between Schillerz and freedom. Then he paused a bit and reflected: “I know some people who may be willing to help, they have a car and would be able to get nun’s uniforms, though...” “Though what?”
“Well, religous orders here are an intimate group, so if they aren’t recognised... well, we can think of something to cover our bases. Do you know, this strategy is so bizzarre that those zealots won’t see it coming in a million light years... It may just work.”
He excused himself, blushed slightly at the realisation of how cheesy and hackneyed this line might seem to a neutral observer, and started flicking through the phone directory. Schillerz felt a surge of pride at having his idea accepted, as if he had won a minor battle in what had become an oedipal war of intellect with Tom. Then, like one of those anti-climactic post-coital moments, he reflected that he was a spy, a man of action, while his new mentor was a man of intellect. Yet now the intellectual was leaping into action with the elan of a poet from the first war before he became bogged down in the pestilent trenches, while Schillerz was looking out the window reflectively, like Bismarck or Frederick the Great in one of those propaganda biopics he had seen, but shorn of the copious facial hair and monocle and pointy Prussian helmet. He thought of the ironies inherent in this latest vicissitude that life had thrown at him and how aleatory the world seemed and all that, then looked down at Tom, who for all the world could have been a CEO of a high-flying dot.com if he had more, smaller phones, a laptop, and maybe a condenser microphone. In truth, he was more like a Hollywood exec, who, then as now would have been pitching wildly implausible scenarios round the place, with all the gusto, bravado and brass balls that would have required. When Schillerz turned his attention to Tom, he started pick